Urgent warning to Scots as dinner favourite could disappear from supermarket shelves

SCOTS are being warned a dinner favourite could vanish from supermarket shelves over environmental concerns.

Scampi is supplied by boats dragging heavy fishing nets across the seabed, which a charity says causes serious harm to other marine life.

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Open Seas said that for every kilo of scampi caught in bottom trawls, at least another kilo of marine life is killed and discarded.

It is writing to supermarkets asking them to avoid stocking scampi until the fishery process is sustainably managed.

Nick Underdown, head of campaigns at Open Seas, said: “This bite-size food comes with a big environmental price tag for our seas.

“The mesh of the bottom-trawl nets used are particularly narrow, which means that large volumes of other sea life are caught, killed and wasted.

“We think customers will want to know the hidden and unsustainable cost of scampi and take action.”

The campaign asks supermarkets to avoid scampi, also known as Nephrops, until a number of criteria are met.

Scotland is a world leading producer of langoustine and scampi.

Latest Scottish Government figures show 18,000 tonnes of trawled Nephrops were landed last year, worth £67 million.

Open Seas said the seafood industry has put in place a Fishery Improvement Project which is meant to address these by-catch problems.

However, it said that after nearly five years, there has been no effective change to the management of the fishery.

Mr Underdown urged supermarkets to “take genuine action for the environment”.

He said: “Business as usual is no longer an option and improved management of this damaging fishery would greatly assist much-needed recovery within our seas.”

Donna Fordyce, chief executive of Seafood Scotland, said: “All Scottish vessels adhere to stringent legislation in terms of trawling and rightly so; the fisheries being described by Open Seas are not behaviours we recognise.”

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