Open Government Licence (OGL)

For assessment purposes, the Scottish creel fishing grounds are divided into 12 assessment areas. Some Scottish assessment areas extend outside Scottish Territorial Waters. On the east of Scotland the South East assessment area extends beyond the Scottish border, while on the west coast, the Clyde assessment area stops short of the Irish border. There is some fishing on grounds outside the assessment areas. Currently these areas support only small fisheries and landings data are monitored for any change in importance.

Derived from Thomas, H.J., 1958. Lobster and crab fisheries in Scotland. Marine Research, 8: 107 and subsequently revised to include two offshore areas – Papa, which lies to the west of Shetland, and Sule, which is to the north and west of Orkney and includes Rona, Sulisker and Sule-Skerry banks.

A Ramsar site is the land listed as a Wetland of International Importance under the Convention on Wetlands of International Importance Especially as Waterfowl Habitat (the Ramsar Convention) 1973. The Scottish Government has designated 51 Ramsar sites in Scotland, covering 326,719 hectares. 

This layer is a Web Map Service (WMS) displaying Scotland's Ramsar sites that contribute to the MPA network.

Obstacles to Fish Passage (SEPA WMS) contains information on the location of barriers on the river network, whether they are natural or man-made and whether they are impassable or passable to fish under certain conditions. The legend accompanying the WMS displays Barrier Type.

The initial dataset was received by SEPA in January 2008 from Fisheries Research Services (which became Scottish Government Marine Scotland in April 2009). The dataset has undergone some error checking and correction with help from FRS / MS. Additional information on obstructions was provided to SEPA by the Fisheries Trusts and Boards between January and March 2009. Workshops with participants from SEPA and Fisheries Trusts were held in late 2010 and early 2011 to correct and add to the dataset. The dataset is updated on an on-going basis by SEPA with information collected by SEPA staff or information collected by third parties and validated by SEPA fisheries ecologists.

The initial barriers were created during the update in 2007 of the 1986 Salmon map transferring salmon distribution information to GIS format on the 1:50000 Digital Rivers Network (DRN). More detail about the initial data is available in the NASCO report at http://www.nasco.int/pdf/far_habitat/HabitatFAR_Scotland.pdf and Figure 2. Map showing the estimated distribution of salmon in Scotland, based on a 2007 update of the original Map of the Distribution in Scottish Rivers of the Atlantic Salmon, Salmo salarL. (Gardiner and Egglishaw, 1986).

These data underpin Figure 3, Table 3 and Appendix B of Willem B. Buddendorf, Faye L. Jackson, Iain A. Malcolm, Karen J. Millidine, Josie Geris, Mark E. Wilkinson, Chris Soulsby (2019), Integration of juvenile habitat quality and river connectivity models to understand and prioritise the management of barriers for Atlantic salmon populations across spatial scales. STOTEN (2019), 655, 557-566. The data show the increase in river connectivity that would result from the removal of impassable manmade barriers (IMBS) and thus provides a basis for assessing the impact of barriers on Atlantic salmon and the potential benefits of barrier removal / easement. By ranking the connectivity scores it has been possible to develop an approach for prioritising management action.

The connectivity metric "Delta DCIScot(%)" is the percentage increase in national connectivity that is obtained where a barrier is removed, assuming all barriers downstream have also been removed. Cumulative gain is the potential gain in delta DCIScot if this barrier and all downstream IMBs are removed; if there are no IMBs downstream then cumulative gain is equal to delta DCIScot. The connectivity metric used here is weighted by predicted salmon fry density obtained from the benchmark model presented by Iain A. Malcolm, Karen J. Millidine, Ross S. Glover, Faye L. Jackson, Colin P. Millar, Robert J. Fryer (2019), Development of a large-scale juvenile density model to inform the assessment and management of Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar) populations in Scotland. Ecological Indicators, Volume 96, Part 1, 2019, Pages 303-316. This contrasts with other approaches where the weighting is based on wetted areas or river length.