Commercial Fish and Shellfish Stocks

The seas around Scotland support significant populations of commercially important species of fish and shellfish.  The fish cover a diverse range of species falling into two broad categories, pelagic species such as mackerel and herring move about throughout the water column while demersal species such as cod and haddock spend most of their life in close proximity to the sea bed. The distribution of most of these stocks extends over quite wide areas.

Various maps are presented in this section to illustrate results of survey work as well as the Fisheries Sensitivity maps developed in 1998 and updated in 2014.