The Dogger Bank, often described as the ecological heart of the North Sea, is a shallow underwater sandbank that hosts a wide variety of marine life, ranging from soft corals to sharks and rays. It is a breeding ground for whiting, cod and sand eel, and an essential foraging area for seabirds, seals and marine mammals, such as the harbour porpoise, white-beaked dolphin and the minke whale. In the North Sea, the Dogger Bank has been central to northern European life for millennia: it was home to humans when a land bridge connected Britain to the continent; it held huge oyster and mussel beds and it was a nursery area for the North Sea fishery which was the economic engine for the European banking sector; and settling disputes over its fishery formed the basis of the international law of the sea still in use today. It is intimately connected with the development of Northern Europe. Protecting the Dogger Bank, with its unique biodiversity and heritage is a key test for European civilisation. Our report finds that the Dogger Bank should be closed as soon as possible to damaging bottom-towed commercial fishing gears. These fishing gears scrape the surface of the seabed, destroy much in their path and only robust, highly mobile, or short-lived marine species survive. Other types of fishing could be permitted to continue, but only after demonstrating they are not destructive and can be effectively controlled and monitored.