Seòmar agus comataidhean

Thank you. I want to pick up on a second point—I am sorry for jumping about a bit; I have written spider-scribble notes all over the place.

That raises another question that I had not thought about. If the Coronavirus Act 2020 expires, would that remove the Scottish Parliament’s ability to make provision in the event of another outbreak of an infectious disease?

I thank the witnesses for coming along. There are clearly very strong feelings on the matter.

There seem to be an awful lot of competing pressures on the cod box. Lots of different types of boats seem to be going out. How do we get the balance right in order to support the three boats that Elaine Whyte mentioned? I am now even more concerned that we do not have Government scientists here, because the witnesses clearly have questions that they want those scientists to answer.

My question is for Simon Macdonald. What other measures should we take to protect the cod stock?

From the evidence and reasoning that you have seen, do you feel that the Scottish Government was justified in putting in the cod box in the first place?

But the other assumption is that, if you move them, they will not lay any eggs.

My apologies—I misunderstood you.

On the point that you have just made—I am speaking purely from a layman’s point of view—we heard earlier from Simon Macdonald about creel fishermen not having any effect at all on spawning. He seemed to be saying that noise was a big disturber of spawning fish. I will come back to that point later.

What research and data monitoring do we need in order to ensure that we have the proper evidence to protect the cod recovery measures? I know that that is a big question.

To me, protecting the spawning is the same as protecting the fish from being caught. If the fish are being caught, they are not laying eggs, but if they are laying eggs and those eggs are being disturbed, the effect will be the same, surely.

According to the evidence that we were given this morning, noise is a problem for fish that are laying eggs. If the fish do not lay the eggs, you do not get the young fish. It is a dual problem, as far as I can see.