Following the European Union’s zero-catch advice for cod and whiting on the west coast due to a decline in stocks, the Scottish Fishermen’s Organisation (SFO), and the University of Aberdeen are trialling state-of-the-art technology to avoid unwanted catches of these species.

Fishermen on the west coast of Scotland trialled a bespoke software system called BATMap, to report hauls of these species in ‘real-time’. If catches are too high, an automatic alert is triggered to inform other participating vessels in the vicinity so that they can avoid these areas.