Plans by the European Commission to ban fishermen from discarding young undersized fish have been dismissed as "grandstanding and impractical" by the Scottish fleet.

The fishermen say while they support the aim of reducing discards - dumping unwanted fish overboard - implementing an unenforcable ban is not the way forward.

The commission says discard rates in European fisheries vary from negligible in some small-scale coastal fisheries, to 70-90% of the catches in some trawl fisheries.

Scottish fishermen say the latter does not relate to them because conservation efforts by the fleet have reduced discards to under 5%.

The EC plan is to adopt a progressive fishery-by-fishery discard ban and the setting of standards for maximum acceptable by-catch.

"This will provide an incentive to industry to devise ways to meeting the by-catch targets, rather than through series of measures to regulate landing," said Joe Borg, European Commissioner for Fisheries and Maritime Affairs.

"In short, the incentive would be for fishers to take from the sea only what can be marketed.

"The debate on achieving these aims will continue till the end of 2007 and the first proposed measures could be tabled in 2008.

"Discarding is wrong because it represents a waste of precious marine resources. It makes no ecological, economic or ethical sense. The sooner we bring this wasteful practice to an end, the better for fish stocks, the marine environment and the fishing industry."

However, Mike Park, executive chairman of the Scottish White Fish Producers' Association, said: "This is a grandstanding statement. Scottish fishermen are now more intent on trying to deliver things which have meaning - like looking at real time closures and at greater selectivity measures.

"The first thing banning discards does is to legitimise the landing of undersized fish and I am not sure that is compatible with where the commission wants to go.

"We should be trying to build a suite of measures which protect undersized fish, protects the juveniles."

Meanwhile, some west coast fishermen could be signing on as unemployed from this morning because of the Scottish Executive's order to ban scallop fishing in the Firth of Lorne.

That was the warning sounded last night by fishermen's leaders after they had unsuccessfully lobbied Holyrood's Environment Committee yesterday to oppose the order, which will shortly come into force covering the large area of water around Oban and Mull.

Ministers are convinced that the order is necessary because of European environmental directives and the damage caused by dredging for scallops.