"KYLEAKIN, Scotland — Bally Philp hauls up his baited traps from the waters off Scotland’s Isle of Skye, checking each one methodically. Unlike most of Scotland’s coastline, these waters are protected from industrial fishing methods that have devastated seabeds elsewhere. But Philp, who’s fished for more than three decades, has watched conditions deteriorate nearly everywhere else along the coast.

“The inshore archipelagos on the West Coast of Scotland used to be full of fish,” Philp said. “We have no commercial quantities of fish left inshore at all.”

While 37% of Scotland’s waters have been designated as marine protected areas, only a small fraction have management measures in place to enforce that protection, according to environmental groups. Bottom trawling and scallop dredging — methods that rake the seabed — are permitted in about 95% of Scotland’s coastal waters, including within designated protected areas, according to marine conservation groups.

Bottom trawls drag heavy nets across the seafloor, crushing marine habitats. The method causes extensive carbon pollution: it burns nearly three times more fuel than other fishing methods, and the nets disturb seabed sediments, releasing stored carbon into the ocean. Bottom trawlers often discard a substantial portion of their catch back into the sea, and survival rates for discarded marine life are typically very low."

Emily Whitney and Annika Hammerschlag report for the Associated Press January 22, 2026. [2]