Closed area · Scottish Government (Marine Scotland)
Bottom-towed gear prohibited
The South Arran Marine Conservation Order 2015 - SSI 2015 No. 437 (Art 4) · in force since 2016-02-08
A CAUGHT review has read the instrument behind this closure, rather than relying on the summary published with the boundary. Where the two differ, the instrument governs; this reading was made on 2026-09-05.
All fishing gear. Article 4(2): "A person must not deploy (by any means) or use any fishing gear within the protected area." Article 4(11) defines "fishing gear" as "any beam trawl, demersal seine net, demersal trawl, dredge, any other device used for fishing purposes, and any rope or wire associated with the gear", excluding passive gear, pelagic trawl, rod and line and handline.
THE CARVE-OUT RUNS THE OPPOSITE WAY FROM THE FIRTH OF FORTH, so an intuition carried across from there gets this closure backwards. At the Firth of Forth Banks Complex the prohibition reaches demersal mobile gear and demersal SEINES escape. Here the prohibition reaches everything including demersal seines, and small demersal TRAWLERS escape inside Schedule 1. A vessel that works a seine is more exposed here, not less.
A person must not deploy (by any means) or use any fishing gear within the protected area.
Summary as published in the source dataset, shown for comparison. A dataset paraphrase can be narrower or wider than the instrument it summarises, and finding out which is the work above.
Vessels are named only on cases that read CAUGHT and have been examined by a reviewer. Every other case is linked without a name: most are resolved, and naming a boat on a page about the closure would carry an accusation the assessment does not support.
What a case here means. A CAUGHT case is a reason to look, not a verdict. Each one is judged on three independent factors — was it fishing, here and then; what gear does the vessel actually use; and what was prohibited there at that time — and the weakest of the three decides. Most cases are resolved.
Boundaries and rule summaries come from the published datasets named at the foot of this page and can contain errors; the legislation is the authority. If you believe this closure is described wrongly, tell us at contact@caught.org.uk.
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