Fishing using electric charge had long been banned under EU law. But an “experimental” fishery by 84 Dutch vessels had been authorised in European waters since 2007. This allowed electrodes on beam trawls causing fish to be stunned into towed bottom trawls – a process causing widespread harm. Shared access to EU waters meant electric pulse trawlers operated across EU members states’ (including British) waters.
In 2018 Blue Marine joined a call by the French NGO the Bloom Association, to stop the practice. Blue Marine wrote to the Commission and filed a complaint with DG Environment over electric fishing on the large Dogger Bank Marine Protected Area and two other MPAs in UK waters. Regardless of the electric pulse, as an experiment, the activity should have not been allowed in an MPA under EU and UK laws. Blue Marine’s Dr Tom Appleby gave evidence to the European Parliament at an event organised by Bloom. As part of the collaborative effort with other EU environment and fisheries groups the permissions for pulse fishing were not renewed in 2020.
The practice has now stopped in all EU and UK waters – Consistent pressure from across the political spectrum worked!
Blue Marine’s campaign led not just to the closure of the electric pulse fishery but triggered further work to protect the whole of the Dogger Bank (and other offshore sites) in UK and EU waters from bottom-towed fishing.
The EU is still being pressured by some fishing interests to reopen the pulse fishery.
