Fishing boat off Shetland abandoned 80km of nets in seas for almost a month

A fishing boat off Shetland broke down and abandoned more than 80km of netting in the sea for almost a month, prompting fears sea life and the marine environment may have been damaged.

Despite fishing seven times longer than legal limits, the crew were given a warning and no fine, according to documents released under freedom of information law.

We can also reveal that the Scottish Government closed its investigation when the crew claimed they were retrieving the nets. In fact, the vessel’s owner confirmed the equipment was left at sea for a further 10 days.

Local fishermen and Shetland politicians have called for stricter rules around the use of gillnetting, which hang vertically in the water like walls. They claimed the incident shows the Marine Directorate has a threadbare monitoring operation after more than £8m of real-terms cuts from the Scottish Government in the past two years.

“The current system simply is not working,” argued Alistair Carmichael, MP for Orkney and Shetland. “Proper enforcement of the current rules ought to be the bare minimum.”

Documents from the Marine Directorate’s investigation show the nets were set by the Genesis II on a subsea shelf north of Shetland in late April. The vessel’s owner said the last nets were recovered by 21 May – leaving them at sea weeks past the three-day legal limit.

Exact net lengths and locations were redacted from the official documents. But leaked coordinates from local fishing crews reveal the location of nine nets, each almost 10km long, spread across the fishing grounds.

Hooktone Group, an Anglo-Spanish company which owns Genesis II, said it worked to collect the nets as quickly as possible.

“We are committed to responsible and selective fishing practices,” said Hooktone’s chief executive and co-founder, Maria Hermida. “Our crews continue to demonstrate professionalism and cooperation, even in challenging circumstances.”

Hooktone has repeatedly been asked by government agencies to join British delegations at fishing conferences, including in Barcelona this May while its gillnets were in the water. It is due to attend another event in Denmark this October.

In a statement, the Scottish Government confirmed the details of the incident but said its punishment options were limited because the breakdown constituted “force majeure”. Sometimes also known as an “act of god”, force majeure is a legal concept which reduces a party’s culpability for wrongdoing when circumstances are deemed to be out of their control.

The Marine Directorate did not respond to questions about its investigation or budget resourcing.

Gillnets, also known as drift or entangling nets, are a controversial form of fishing criticised by environmental campaigners. They are banned in sensitive marine environments such as the Sea of Cortez and are being phased out at the Great Barrier Reef.

Instead of being dragged through the water, gillnets sit in place on the seafloor ensnaring creatures that swim into them. Oceana, a marine conservation group, has described the equipment as “walls of death” and said this incident was “shocking and sad”. Studies suggest they are the most deadly form of fishing gear for Europe’s diving seabirds and kill nearly 2,000 porpoises in the North Sea alone each year.

It should not need freedom of information requests for the public to gain clear insights into the Marine Directorate’s decision-making processes, including where those processes are lacking.

A spokesperson for Open Seas

James Anderson, the skipper of a local Shetland trawler who first spotted the buoys marking Genesis II’s nets while his crew were fishing in the area, said the gillnets would have been full of dying and rotting fish. “Not just fish – god knows what’ll be attracted to all that dead fish,” he added. “It’s just environmentally terrible.”

Hooktone said it sizes gillnets to target monkfish and avoid other animals, and branded bottom-trawling fishermen as hypocritical and “ignorant” for criticising their environmental impact. The company also said its nets are fixed with trackers so they cannot be lost and claimed that no unintentionally snared animals were found in the recovered netting.

Genesis II was fishing 55km northwest of the island of Unst when its gearbox failed, leaving the crew stranded overnight. The next evening, as it was towed into Shetland, the skipper wrote to the Marine Directorate with the nets’ coordinates promising to pick them up “as soon as the engine is fully operational”.

A fortnight later – four times the legal limit for leaving gillnets deployed – Hooktone wrote to officials proposing that another of its vessels fishing in the area, Brisan, pick up the nets instead. Marine Directorate officials agreed, and the next day issued Genesis II’s skipper with a warning letter, then closed its investigation. “Many thanks to the team for their timely work with regards to this case,” read one of the emails released under freedom of information law.

Over the following week while the Brisan continued fishing, local fishermen wrote to officials complaining that the nets were still at sea. The Marine Directorate said it was still investigating the incident and dismissed other complaints.

On 19 May, Brisan began collecting the nets. The final nets were retrieved on 21 May – 23 days after they were deployed.

“I do wonder how long this gillnetting might have been left at sea if local fishermen had not raised their unfolding ecological concerns with the government,” said Daniel Lawson, an executive officer of the Shetland Fishermen’s Association.

“To see government officials congratulate each other for issuing a mere warning letter is emblematic of the enforcement gulf Shetland fishermen consider to exist between themselves and non-UK owned vessels fishing around the isles.”

Lawson said the incident illustrates the need for stricter rules – either to cut the current 100km limit of gillnets any one boat can set at a time, or enforce more stringent rules for recovering gear in emergency situations.

Some politicians said the most responsible course was to criminalise gillnets in British waters altogether.

Local MP Carmichael called a ban the “only workable outcome”. Shetland Greens councillor Alex Armitage said a ban would not only be good for the environment, but be more easily enforceable than piecemeal regulatory restrictions.

While it can be difficult to monitor how much gillnetting a boat has set out – or how long for – the slow speed and backtracking pattern a gillnetting vessel leaves is easily recognisable to illegal fishing experts.

Other critics argued that the Marine Directorate was falling short of its responsibilities after more than £8m of cuts over the past two years.

“The resourcing of the directorate does not match the scale of what is being asked of it,” said Shetland MSP Beatrice Wishart, comparing the warning letter to “a rap over the knuckles”.

Environmental charity Open Seas described the gillnetting as “reckless”. But it claimed that the Marine Directorate’s response was just as concerning.

“It should not need freedom of information requests for the public to gain clear insights into the Marine Directorate’s decision-making processes, including where those processes are lacking,” a spokesperson said. “Those responsible for environmental damage must be held to account.”

For Shetland fishermen like Anderson, the incident taps into a number of longstanding grievances: that local boats are alleged to be pulled up for minor paperwork infringements while feeling increasingly squeezed out of their traditional grounds.

“When you look at the shelf where we used to fish it’s absolutely covered [in gillnets] because it’s unregulated and nobody’s watching them,” said Anderson.

The practice also threatens the sector’s sustainability if local trawlers are pushed down into shallower grounds where they are more likely to catch pressured species, like cod, he claimed

“It’s frustrating,” Anderson added. “I just feel anger.”

This story was co-published in print in today’s issue of The Shetland Times.

Images: Daniel Shailer

This story was amended at 14.05 on 25 July 2025 so the headline reads: “Fishing boat off Shetland abandoned 80km of nets in seas for almost a month.”