September 2024
Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are designed to safeguard the most vulnerable marine habitats and species from irreversible damage. Yet below the surface of our waters lurks a troubling reality. Using a practice known as ‘bottom-trawling,’ heavy weighted nets are being systematically dragged across our ocean floor damaging every form of marine life in their wake. Over recent years, awareness of the damage caused by this practice has risen (see the Marine Conservation Society’s ‘unProtected Areas’ report from 2021) and the UK Government has been working with the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) to use bye-laws ban bottom-trawling around particular features within Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in English waters. Whilst this is welcome progress, the focus on protecting features only allows bottom trawling to go in other parts of MPAs, undermining their ability to act as safeguarded areas for marine wildlife.
In March 2024, Oceana UK found that UK offshore MPAs were subject to over 33,000 hours of suspected bottom trawling, with just 10 vessels responsible for over a quarter of the damaging activity. The nets used, often weighing several tonnes, bulldoze everything in their path, from delicate deep-water sponges to ancient cold-water corals. Due to the nature of the damage inflicted, it is unlikely that these areas of seabed will ever recover and unlike, say, deforestation in the Amazon, these marine environments cannot be replanted. Bottom trawling not only causes catastrophic damage to the fish species it’s targeting but also untargeted marine creatures, known as ‘bycatch.’ Some of our most iconic species, dolphins, seals and sharks, are caught indiscriminately in bottom-trawled nets.
The damage caused by bottom trawling extends beyond the destruction of marine habitats and species; it also significantly contributes to the climate crisis. As the seafloor is irreversibly raked, it releases huge quantities of stored carbon into the atmosphere. The Southwest Deeps (East) MPA off the Cornish coast stores an estimated 1.67 megatons of carbon, the equivalent to the carbon emissions from over 1 million return flights from London to Sydney. Yet, it currently receives no formal protection from bottom trawling.
Last week, the Scottish Government announced it would consult on the implementation of fisheries management measures across its offshore MPA network. The document asks respondents to consider whether a bottom trawling ban should take a whole site or feature based approach. This nuance is a welcome step forward. Implementing restrictions on a site-by-site, feature-by-feature basis will not create the connected network of nature protection, recovery and enhancement we so desperately need. The UK Government must act fast to ensure the MPA network under its jurisdiction is fit for purpose. Currently, the MMO’s MPA Management is making slow progress even in just protecting features within MPAs in English seas. 2 out of 4 has only recently been published and, as the year draws to a close, it feels unlikely the remaining stages will be concluded by the end of the year.
The time has come to take decisive action. Banning bottom trawling in across the MPA network, not just around protected features, is not just an environmental necessity but a moral imperative. MPAs will struggle to contribute to nature recovery as long as damaging fishing practices take place within them. Without an effective MPA network, the sea will become unable to perform its vital function in the fight against climate change and fail to host the biodiversity needed to support a sustainable fishing industry. A ban on bottom trawling in MPAs is a crucial step forwards towards ensuring our seas are healthy, resilient and productive for future generations to come.
Cassie Rist is Senior Policy and Advocacy Officer at Wildlife and Countryside Link. Follow @WCL_News
The opinions expressed in this blog are the authors' and not necessarily those of the wider Link membership.
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