January 2025
I am an ocean advocate. I care deeply about the seas and shores around our island nation, and I am proud to work for Oceana UK to drive action to bring our marine world back to life. And the UK urgently needs to act, four years after missing a legal deadline to achieve healthy seas and five years away from our 2030 goals.
Yet in recent years I have also been deeply involved in the UK’s transition in farming, including a fundamental change in the way that government money is used, which albeit not perfectly, is starting to reward positive actions by farmers to restore nature. It strikes me that the parallels between farming and fishing run deep, yet progress does not seem to be mirrored across the sectors.
Farming for the future
I have watched a dynamic, positive and inclusive movement of farmers, led by groups such as the Nature Friendly Farming Network, lead this call for change. I have attended various farming events and conferences, including seeing the Oxford Farming Conference, once a staunch defender of conventional agriculture, recognise and debate core issues about what, and for who, farming is actually for.
At this year’s Oxford Farming Conference in January, the Secretary of State made a compelling pitch for a new roadmap to transform the future of farming in England, one where resilient and nature-friendly farming are the economic as well as environmental choice. His vision is for “a sector that recognises restoring nature is not in competition with sustainable food production, but is essential to it”. I agree.
Why not fishing, too?
As I have come back into the ocean world, I have been struck by the lack of such discussions around the future of fishing. Indeed the political leadership and urgency for fisheries is sorely lacking, in large part because there is no legal deadline to end overfishing. Half of the UK’s most important fish populations are overfished or critically low according to Oceana analysis. Yet both Ministers and powerful voices in the industry continue to peddle simplistic narratives about solving ‘food security’ by increasing domestic production at sea regardless of cost to nature, while completely failing to acknowledge that we import
most of the seafood we eat. As a result maxing out production will barely do anything for UK consumers, won’t do anything for coastal communities as much of UK caught seafood is exported immediately upon landing with little or no processing, and will continue to destroy our marine life.
In the meantime, too many of our protected areas and blue-carbon hotspots are being devastated by bottom trawling and dredging; too many fish populations are overfished; and too much power, quota and subsidies are being channelled into industrial vessels at the expense of the small-scale fleet and UK coastal communities. All of these issues are handled in silos, far away from other decisions on future use of marine space. Bold and transformative action is needed.
Mission regeneration
At Oceana, we are trying to start a fresh conversation on the future of fisheries. In our report, Mission Regeneration, we seek to build a ‘regenerative’ approach to the way the UK treats and manages its fisheries, similar to what is beginning to emerge in UK agriculture. In doing so, we seek to redefine government support for fishing on the basis of core principles of fairness, science, respect, resilience and transparency – not just quantity of fish landed or profit delivered to industry.
Making nature-friendly fisheries the economic as well as environmental choice lies at the heart of this mission, ensuring that those fishers who operate in a socially and environmentally responsible way are rewarded for it through policy, quota, investment and regulation. Crucially, the cost of this change must not be borne by those who have the least to fall back on. We must deliver a just transition for fisheries workers away from destructive forms of fishing towards a fair, sustainable and regenerative future.
Secretary of State, let’s talk
A better future is possible. Let’s put a hard deadline in law to end overfishing. Let’s channel support to those fishers that fish in harmony with nature. Let’s ban bottom trawling in our marine protected areas and recognise the value of our blue carbon stores. And let’s ensure a safe, dignified and abuse-free working environment for all fishers.
Secretary of State, if you replace the words farming with fishing in your recent speeches, you've got the same case. Let’s put a roadmap together and have that conversation on how we make overfishing a thing of the past. That is a future worth striving for. Let’s make it happen.
Alec Taylor is Director of Policy and Research at Oceana UK. Follow @oceanauk.bsky.social
The opinions expressed in this blog are the authors' and not necessarily those of the wider Link membership.
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