Fishing in Scotland

The fishing industry in Scotland comprises a significant proportion of the United Kingdom fishing industry. A recent inquiry by the Royal Society of Edinburgh found fishing to be of much greater social, economic and cultural importance to Scotland than it is relative to the rest of the UK. Scotland has just 8.4% of the UK population but lands at its ports over 60% of the total catch in the UK.

Many of these are ports in relatively remote communities such as Fraserburgh, Kinlochbervie or Lerwick, which are scattered along an extensive coastline and which, for centuries, have looked to fishing as the main source of employment. Restrictions imposed under the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) affect all European fishing fleets, but they have proved particularly severe in recent years for the demersal or whitefish sector (boats mainly fishing for cod, haddock and whiting) of the Scottish fishing industry.

The main fishing areas are the North Sea and the seas west of Scotland.

Fish have been recognised as a major food source from the earliest times. Fishing was important to the earliest settlers in Scotland, around 7000 BC. At this stage, fishing was a subsistence activity, undertaken only to feed the fisher and their immediate community. By the medieval period, salmon and herring were important resources and were exported to continental Europe, and the towns of the Hanseatic League in particular. As the industry developed, "fishertouns" and villages sprang up to supply the growing towns and fishing became more specialised. The many religious houses in Scotland acted as a spur to fisheries, granting exclusive fishing rights and demanding part of their tithes in fish.

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