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This article was originally published in Fishing News
By Charles Clover, co-founder, Blue Marine Foundation
There have been some heated things said by the industry about Steve Reed’s announcement that he intends to ban bottom trawling in England’s offshore marine protected areas. I can understand why as this move follows in the wake of Sir Keir Starmer’s unpalatable decision to guarantee EU fleets unaltered access to our waters for the next 12 years. But here’s the good news, for what industry observers appear to have missed is that Reed’s announcement does the opposite of Starmer’s: it just happens to reduce EU access to our waters substantially more than it restricts the current activities of the UK fleet.
The take-home from the MMO’s consultation document is that the vast majority of the bottom trawling fishing activity that will be excluded from 31 out of 43 offshore MPAs is carried out by the EU fleet. The MMO’s economic analysis tells the same story: it says that there will be a £530,000 loss to the UK fleet each year from not trawling in these scientifically-chosen protected places but EU fleets will lose out by more than £15m – almost certainly because of the EU’s dominance of our waters. We have therefore a case of the government giving access with one hand and taking it away with the other – which actually deserves to be welcomed.
The prevailing state of affairs all along the south coast, inshore fishermen tell us, is that there is no fish and no quota to catch it with. That is why they sat alongside us, Blue Marine Foundation, in the high court this year to challenge the over-allocation of fishing opportunities under the government’s Fisheries Act. Against that backdrop, the closure of these offshore MPAs to trawling may well go some way to addressing the problems the UK fleet faces – at least in the Channel, the Southern North Sea and the Western Channel – because they will reduce excessive fishing effort and make up for the failures of fisheries management. Too much quota has been allocated above scientific advice for decades (notably pollack) and managers on both sides of the Channel have been slow to pick up the enormous damage being done by fly seiners, big pelagic trawlers and so on.
But won’t displacement be a problem? Not in the Channel because the EU fleet cannot be displaced into UK inshore waters, for they are not allowed to fish there. And if you look at the “heat maps” of trawling compiled by Global Fishing Watch there are no unexploited areas – the difference between an area being trawled nine times a year and ten times a year is marginal. The gains in fish reproduction from fish and shellfish being undisturbed in large areas that are currently fished by all trawl fleets may be substantial. When the habitat recovers the UK fleet may well make its living by “fishing the line” as happens in other parts of the world.
You may say that’s how you might expect me to see it, as the co-founder of one of the eNGOs Fishing News sometimes demonises in its leader columns. So let’s do some fact checking. I am also a journalist of 40 or so years’ experience, used to looking at what the rhetoric says and where the true facts lie. On this occasion I observe rhetoric and fact appear to be a long way apart. Let’s just examine what some people said last week.
The Cornish FPO wrote a scathing response to the Reed consultation saying what was proposed was a “blanket ban on fishing in areas concentrated around the Cornish coast.” Correction: it is a ban on trawling, not fishing, in 13 per cent of English waters, distributed widely, not just around Cornwall. The CFPO said they had been “betrayed by Westminster” and “silenced by extremists.” Question: is Sir David Attenborough an extremist?
Next question: do eNGOs deserve to be called extremist for demonstrating to the government, back in 2021, that trawling was legally incompatible with the protection of the seabed as a feature in the case of the Dogger Bank? What’s happening now is the third tranche of byelaws being proposed in line with that realisation of what post-Brexit law actually said. Industry spokesman know that full well and should not feign surprise. I recall the East Anglian fishing organisation, REAF, actually supported the decision to ban bottom trawling on the Dogger because Dutch pulse beamers had devastated fish stocks there.
On the rhetoric again, last week Elspeth Macdonald of the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation accused the UK government of caving in “to the emotional, unevidenced siren calls of the environmental NGOs and Sir David Attenborough.” Unevidenced? Elspeth, may you be forgiven. I would not wade into Scottish waters in this way, but I do understand that your spicy remarks were a shot across the bows of the Scottish government which is undertaking a similar consultation. May I remind you of a bit of history though? These offshore MPAs in English waters were decided upon in a two-year government consultation starting in 2011 and costing £8 million. It involved scientists – including the respected Mike Kaiser – and members of industry itself who ensured protected areas did not go into prime fishing grounds. It was always expected that bottom trawling would be excluded from areas where the seabed was protected as a feature.
What happened, though, was that when we were in the EU, bans on trawling to comply with Habitats regulations were blocked by the EU fishing nations. France, the Netherlands, Belgium and others still ignore EU law every day – though they now face legal challenges from ourselves and European NGOs for doing so. So arguably, Reed’s decision was a blow for UK sovereignty that should be supported by the industry. It was the UK exercising its rights as an independent coastal state to manage it waters in the only way it can under the Trade and Co-operation Agreement – for environmental reasons. Under the TCA, as we have discovered, you cannot restrict non-UK vessels right to fish, but you can determine how and where all vessels can operate.
Looked at this way, Reed’s announcement is actually taking access away from foreign fleets in some of the most intensively fished areas and resting our fish stocks in ways that joint fisheries management has failed to do.
Look at the MMO’s assessment of current use of these MPAs, for example, in the Eastern Channel: Albert Field: 100 per cent French fishing activity. Bassurelle Sandbank: 96 per cent non-UK, mainly Dutch, French and Belgian. Beachy Head: 66 per cent non-UK.
Offshore Brighton: 95 per cent non-UK. Or the southern North Sea: Goodwin Sands, mainly non-UK vessels. Haisborough Hammond and Winterton: 99 per cent non-UK vessels, mainly Dutch beamers. Western Channel: in the majority of MPAs the majority of fishing effort is by non-UK fleets, with one or two exceptions, such as Start Point to Plymouth and the Eddystone. In the Irish Sea and North Sea the UK fleet is more active.
See what I mean?
Some of the £0.5m annual loss in value to UK fleets may well be replaced in time by fishing differently in those restored MPAs – depending on how far offshore they are. The kind of
improvements to be expected have been documented in Lyme Bay where there was a ban on trawling in 2008: a fourfold improvement in biodiversity overall, a fourfold increase in harvestable commercial species. And as with Lundy, which is a no-take, expect spillover effects.
Overall, the benefit to UK nationally from the 42 offshore MPAs in English waters is estimated as £3.1 billion over 20 years (we are told that includes benefits from there being more fish but I struggle to understand the MMO’s figures on that) and the loss to industry £7.8m. Overall I take it that means an overwhelming improvement in the health of our seas from which the fishing industry on both sides of the Channel may actually benefit.
First impressions of complex announcements are usually wrong. There is the possibility that as the 12-week consultation progresses, more will see that there is a substantial silver lining to this passing cloud.
