FLOATING OFFSHORE WIND EXISTENTIAL THREAT TO FISHING INDUSTRY, WARNS SFF LEADER

Floating offshore wind existential threat to fishing industry, warns SFF leader.  Plans for giant floating offshore wind farms threaten to destroy Scotland’s fishing industry, the chief executive of the industry’s biggest representative body warned last night (Thursday).

Elspeth Macdonald told the annual Scottish Fishermen’s Federation dinner, attended by First Minister John Swinney, that with technology as it currently stands, despite many discussions and efforts to find solutions, mobile fishing and floating offshore wind “are simply not able to co-exist”.

“Our businesses will be completely excluded from areas that have been fished for generations, and the consequences of that – on businesses, on people, on the environment – are simply not known,” she told guests at The Scotsman Hotel in Edinburgh.

“The government risks sleepwalking into a scenario where the ambition to lead the world on floating offshore wind means that it decimates or destroys our world-class food production.”

She added:

“There have been very many meetings and very many words, but we now need action – action from government to support and protect our sector because be in no doubt, it is at very serious risk from the planned expansion of floating offshore wind.”

Ms Macdonald said everyone understood the need for energy transition, and a more sustainable way to power the economy for the future.

“But we also need to eat, and we know that fishing is far more efficient in terms of greenhouse gas emissions than nearly all other forms of food production.

“We understand the ambitions of governments north and south of the border for reaching net zero goals through investment in renewables that will support jobs and growth, but that must not be to the detriment of our long-standing and world-class fishing industry.

“I fully believe that this is one of, if not the biggest challenge we currently face as an industry, and I want to see the Scottish Government put its shoulder to the wheel in doing everything that it can to make sure our industry is not an accidental casualty of floating offshore wind.”

Ms Macdonald acknowledged that since the end of the Bute House Agreement the Scottish Government had talked very differently about fishing, but emphasised that this now must be matched by also “doing things differently” – “pragmatic policies that recognise and reflect the imperfect world we operate in, not red tape that ties both us and government in knots”.

With consultation underway on management measures for Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), she also took the opportunity to remind the Scottish Government of its commitment made to the Scottish Parliament at the start of the process a decade ago that MPAs would be managed using the principle of sustainable use.

There needs, she said, to be a presumption of use as long as the conservation objectives of a site can be met.