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What is bottom trawling?
Bottom-trawling (dragging heavy gear and nets along the sea floor) and dredging (raking the sea floor with steel teeth and chain mesh) is a destructive fishing practice and yet it is still permitted on 40% of the seabed in UK’s Marine Protected Areas.
What are Marine Protected Areas?
Marine protected areas (MPAs) are ocean areas set aside for marine life to thrive and recover. This is essential for healthy, functioning marine ecosystems and we have already seen extraordinary recovery of marine life where destructive fishing methods have been removed. MPAs provide safe havens for marine life, including endangered species. In the UK MPAs have been designated as Marine Conservation Zones (MCZs), Special Areas of Conservation (SACs), Nature Conservation MPAs (NCMPAs) or Special Protection Areas (SPAs).
Why is bottom trawling so controversial?
Bottom trawling poses irreversible damage to marine life, wiping out vital ecosystems that support commercial fish populations and sustain livelihoods. It is the single greatest source of disturbance to the world’s seabed habitats, responsible for the highest rates of bycatch and discards of any fishing gear, and linked to many well-known cases of fisheries overexploitation. A wealth of studies also show that bottom trawling generates significant amounts of CO2 emissions and is fuelled by government subsidies.
What are the socio-economic impacts of bottom trawling?
If bottom trawling continues in the UK’s MPAs, marine ecosystems, fisheries, and resources will not have a chance to recover. This will contribute over time to reducing the productivity of the sea and the sustainability of fisheries, which will threaten livelihoods across the small-scale commercial and recreational fishing sector, discouraging investment into our seas, and meaning many small-scale fishermen will go out of business.
How does bottom trawling affect climate change?
Bottom trawling, a fishing method that involves dragging nets along the seabed, is a significant contributor to climate change and ocean acidification by disrupting carbon-rich seabed habitats and releasing stored carbon into the atmosphere and water (the top 10cm of seabed in the UK and Isle of Man stores 244 million tonnes of carbon). Bottom trawling also damages and removes the carbon stored within the tissues of seabed marine life.
What is bycatch and what are the impacts of bycatch from bottom trawling?
Bycatch is fish or other marine life that is caught but is not the primary target of the fishing. This includes marine mammals, sharks and turtles in some foreign trawl fisheries. In the UK, the main bycatch concern is the huge volumes of fish that are caught and then thrown back overboard – most of this is dead and many are juvenile fish that will never be able to reproduce, further reducing future fish stock recovery. As an example – in the North Sea 30,000 tonnes of dab (a small flatfish) is caught and discarded dead every year. This accounts for about 5 million individual fish. About 90% of dab caught are discarded.
Does Blue Marine want to ban bottom trawling everywhere?
Blue Marine wants bottom trawling removed from all our Marine Protected Areas that are meant to be ‘protected’ for sensitive seabed features. Many of the MPAs where bottom trawling is permitted were designated as Marine Conservation Zones under the Marine and Coastal Access Act between 2013-2019 with input from the fishing industry to identify their location. Compromises on the location and boundaries of these MCZs were made at that time, so it is vital that we protect their full extent from bottom trawling and it is unacceptable that so much of this ‘protected’ area remains unprotected from the most damaging fishing practices in some cases over a decade later.
What are the benefits of well-managed properly protected Marine Protected Areas?
- Protection and restoration of marine life and fish stocks
- Re-establishment of a balanced and functioning ecosystem
- Enhanced resilience to climate change and recovery from storms
- Carbon sequestration and storage
- Provision of resources and services
What has the UK government committed to?
UK Government has committed to protect 30% of our seas by 2030. Yet 40% of the seabed in UK’s Marine ‘Protected’ Areas is still not protected from damaging bottom trawling. In December 2022, 196 nations, including the UK, signed up to the United Nations Global Biodiversity Framework committing to conserve 30 per cent of terrestrial, inland water, coastal and marine areas by 2030. The current Labour government also inherited a commitment from the previous Conservative government for effective management measures to be in place in all MPAs by the end of 2024, as outlined in the Environment Improvement Plan 2023. This deadline has now been missed.
Is Blue Marine an anti fishing NGO?
- No, one of Blue Marine’s main ambitions is to support low-impact small-scale fishing and equitable use of the sea. We support many projects working directly with and supporting small-scale fisheries in the UK, Europe and further afield. We aim to tackle inequitable distribution of marine resources, with fair support and access to fishing grounds and stocks for sustainable small-scale fisheries and support a just transition away from destructive fishing methods.
- There is also little evidence of ‘anti fishing’ NGOs – there are NGOs that regularly campaign against overfishing and destructive fishing but the idea that there are legions of NGOs going around campaigning that all fishing should be banned is untrue. Criticising damaging elements of any industry is not ‘anti’ that industry.
How is Blue Marine supporting fishers?
Blue Marine has worked with small-scale inshore fishermen for over a decade, supporting infrastructure and marketing projects that help promote and sell sustainably caught fish and shellfish. In Lyme Bay, on the English Channel coast, following a ban on bottom trawling within the Lyme Bay MPA, we established a working group with local static gear fishermen to ensure that static gear fisheries were managed for the benefit of local fishermen and the environment. We invested in chiller units and ice machines to ensure that their sustainably caught fish could command competitive prices at market. In Jersey, we established ‘Jersey Hand Dived’ to promote diver caught scallop fishermen and have supported funding proposals for improved hand dived scallop processing units. Nationally, we advocate for fisheries management policies and practices that safeguard small-scale lower impact fisheries and for effective sustainable management and recovery of the stocks on which local fishermen and communities depend.
What species of fish are caught using bottom trawling and dredging?
- Scallops – using scallop dredgers
- Prawns, shrimp, Nephrops – using beam and otter trawls
- Cod, haddock – using pair seine and pair trawls
- Sole – using beam and otter trawls
- Monkfish, cuttlefish – using beam trawls
Why did Blue Marine sue the government?
To challenge the UK government for setting fishing opportunities higher than scientists advise, which is leading to overfishing. Blue Marine argues that the government’s unsustainable management of fish stocks is an irresponsible use of national assets and against the interests of the majority of fishermen as they will run out of fish to catch.
Is Blue Marine working in the EU on bottom trawling?
Blue Marine is working with partners in Brussels (Seas At Risk, Environmental Justice Foundation and European country NGOs) to support legal cases against bottom trawling in EU MPAs. These actions have been taken against specific countries’ negligence and damage to specific sites. Collectively, they illustrate a wider malaise of a lack of governance, political will, investment and indeed understanding of EU Member State environmental responsibilities. Our evidence has been particularly used in the Dogger Bank (Southern North Sea) by Dutch and German NGOs; and in a separate case for Italian, French and German waters in a complaint handed into the Commission on 28 April 2025.
