Other stocks will also be affected

He said that the scientific assessment on which a ban would be based shows Scotland's major fish, haddock, at a 30 year high, while the under threat cod stock rose over the last four years.

A report from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (Ices), advises European Union ministers to endorse zero catches of cod in the North Sea, off western Scotland and in the Irish Sea until they return to an acceptable level.

Mr Salmond said: "To actually suggest putting thousands of people who depend on the haddock, prawn, and whiting fishery out of work is ludicrous and irresponsible.

Environmental causes

"Little wonder that the Scottish fishing communities have had their fill of a Common Fisheries Policy which uses science as a political instrument.

"It is the policy which should be disposed of, not the fishing families of Scotland."

He said that the haddock, prawn and whiting fishery should be 'decoupled' from cod.

"It is absurd and dangerous to run a fishery as if only one stock mattered when 80% of Scotland's fishing industry is not cod.

All of these Draconian cuts are simply going to end up with the collapse of the Scottish fishing industry and not going to bring back a single cod to our waters Struan Stevenson

"It is immoral to ignore the real environmental causes of the cod scarcity, which are North Sea warming and industrial fishing."

Mr Salmond's sentiments were echoed by Tory MEP Struan Stevenson, chairman of the European Parliament's fisheries committee.

Mr Stevenson told BBC Radio's Good Morning Scotland programme that new evidence shows the cod have simply moved further north due to a shift in cold water plankton due to climate change.

"The fishermen are saying this is a King Canute strategy, you cannot by political decisions taken by bureaucrats in Brussels expect the cod suddenly to swim back into warm waters around the coast of Britain where there is no plankton for their larvae to feed on.

"They've seen off the coast of Newfoundland in Canada, where exactly the same phenomenon has happened, that the cod haven't returned even after a moratorium on fishing of 10 years.