The Fishing Daily – 8th January 2026
“The Sustainable Inshore Fisheries Trust (SIFT) has formally challenged the scientific basis of the Scottish Government’s proposed Sea Fish (Prohibition on Fishing) (Firth of Clyde) Order 2026, warning that the measures are unlikely to recover cod stocks and risk further harm to parts of the fishing sector.
In a letter to Finlay Carson MSP, Convener of the Scottish Parliament’s Rural Affairs and Islands Committee, SIFT said the recent consultation on a renewed Clyde seasonal closure was “fatally flawed” and misrepresented the available science.
SIFT argued that none of the options presented by the Scottish Government align with current scientific evidence, and that repeating previous seasonal closures would amount to continuing more than two decades of management failure.”
