Scottish Pelagic Industry-Science Data Collection Programme Annual Report 2025

The Scottish Pelagic Industry-Science Data Collection Programme (SPISDCP) is a collaboration between the Scottish Pelagic Fishermen’s Association, UHI Shetland and the Marine Directorate of the Scottish government. Within the programme, crews onboard Scottish pelagic fishing vessels undertake sampling of their catches in two ways: selfsampling, whereby vessel crews measure the length and weight of a sample of fish in the catch; and co-sampling, whereby crews collect frozen samples of fish for scientists onshore to carry out biological sampling of length, sex, maturity and ageing. From 2021, when the programme had become established across the majority of vessels in the fleet, the coverage of sampling increased considerably, providing comprehensive sampling coverage of Scotland’s pelagic fisheries. Such coverage can be seen in the report figures which show landed weight and sampling coverage for each fishery. The data collected from these samples provide valuable biological information for each of the targeted species, highlighting patterns and changes in distribution and size of fish in the catch. This report provides a summary of the data collected across the herring, mackerel and blue whiting fisheries, from the start of data collection in July 2018, up to the latest collation of data in December 2025, and is intended as an overview of the current dataset to date.