To: Scottish Government
End Corporate Privilege: Create a £30 Boat-Based Single-Tuna Licence for Scottish Citizens
We call with deep indignation upon the Scottish Government and marine authorities to strip away exclusive commercial privilege and return Scotland's marine resources to its people.
Why is this important?
The current legal framework governing Atlantic Bluefin Tuna in Scottish waters represents an unfathomable system of corporate privilege and systemic greed. While large-scale commercial vessels are granted lucrative state-backed privileges to extract tons of tuna from our shared seas for massive corporate profit, it remains strictly illegal for a reasonable citizen to catch just one fish.
To make matters worse, despite the UK's massive national allocation, the centralized system has left Scotland with zero commercial tuna allocations, starving our coastal communities of their natural heritage. This is a moral, economic, and regulatory failure.
We demand a legal framework allowing any citizen or freeman of Scotland to purchase an annual £30 licence, valid for the duration of the tuna season, granting the right to catch, tag, and retain exactly one Atlantic Bluefin Tuna per year for personal consumption or local sale.
Our proposed system is a superior, safer, and more conservative approach based on these unyielding grounds:
- True Conservation vs. Commercial Greed: Granting a vessel a strict, non-transferable licence for just one fish per year is fundamentally far more conservative and ecologically responsible than allocating massive, multi-tonne quotas to industrial fishing vessels.
- A 5% Commercial Reduction: Reallocating just a tiny 6-tonne fraction out of the UK’s 120-tonne commercial pool would easily provide enough quota to comfortably sustain the "one-fish" citizen licence program across Scotland.
- Accessibility and Shared Recreation: Attaching the licence directly to a registered boat ensures maximum accessibility. It allows families, friends, or local angling groups to share a single vessel and participate in the harvest safely together without forcing every single person on board to bear separate costs.
- Anti-Rigging Protections: To prevent exploitation, the framework will include a strict "one person, one boat" registration rule per season. Individuals will be legally barred from purchasing licences for multiple vessels or using loophole fleets to stack quotas. Once the boat lands its single, rightful entitlement, its tuna tag expires for the year.
- Funding Marine Preservation: Implementing a reasonable £30 fee for the annual boat licence creates a direct, self-funding revenue stream for the Scottish Government. This money can be directly ring-fenced to fund marine conservation, anti-poaching patrols, and scientific research.
- Community Wealth: Allowing a citizen to either consume or sell their single catch directly benefits local families and coastal economies, shifting wealth from massive commercial entities back to regular Scottish citizens.
Sign this petition to demand an end to corporate maritime monopoly and fight for fairness in our seas!
It's happening all around Scotland and all the isles. I read a sign once when visiting the coast, and it has always bothered me: the amount of government oversight and greed that steps on personal, individual freedoms for perfectly natural, recreational, and innocent activities.
These activities are being ruined by laws that once never used to exist. There was once true natural liberties available to all free men—to be free to pursue within a reasonable amount, to go make such a catch, and to pursue their fishing and angling dreams and responsibilities.
The fact that this is illegal without a privileged position and a wealthy background, such as a rich corporation, is absolutely feudal, disgusting, and bonkers. It is also extremely unproportional in regards to conservation when you look at the data on who gets access—like the common man isn't good enough for it. It's very grievous!
It's insulting to our Natural Heritage.
