- In 2023, commercial fishing vessels spent more than 33,000 hours operating in the U.K.’s offshore marine protected areas, mainly using trawling and dredging methods.
- Bottom trawling is permitted in most of the U.K.’s MPAs, raising questions about the effectiveness of these protections. This issue isn’t exclusive to the U.K., but also occurs throughout the European Union.
- While the U.K. government says it has made “significant progress” it protecting its marine environment through the strengthening of its MPAs, conservationists say significant work is needed to protect the sensitive marine areas in the U.K.
- According to one expert, poorly managed marine protected areas render these ecosystems less resilient to the impacts of climate change and other stressors.
In 2023, commercial fishing vessels equipped with dredges and bottom-trawling gear spent more than 33,000 hours operating in the U.K.’s offshore marine protected areas, according to ocean advocacy group Oceana U.K. The organization used satellite data to monitor commercial fishing activity across 63 offshore benthic MPAs in U.K. waters, which are intended to protect marine biodiversity. This fishing activity took place over the course of the year.
The analysis revealed that despite their protected status, MPAs in the U.K. are hotbeds of fishing activity, raising concerns about the fishing industry’s impact on sensitive marine ecosystems, especially for life on the seafloor. It also revealed that just 10 vessels were responsible for a quarter of this bottom-trawling activity.
These findings beg the question: what is the point of these MPAs if they cannot perform their function of protecting marine biodiversity?
How do MPAs work in the U.K.?
MPAs are areas of the ocean where certain activities are restricted or prohibited to protect marine ecosystems or to promote sustainable fisheries. There are many different types of MPAs, each imposing different rules in terms of extractive activities and access. For instance, “no-take” MPAs forbid any type of extraction and offer the highest level of protection for marine life. Locally managed marine areas may allow community members to fish within some parts but enforce closed seasons or limits that promote population recovery.
The U.K. has a network of 374 MPAs and other protected areas covering 38% of its waters. These include highly protected marine areas (HPMAs), marine conservation zones (MCZs), special areas of conservation (SACs), special protection areas with marine components (SPAs), and nature conservation MPAs.
Ella McCaffrey of the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA), a ministerial department whose responsibilities include managing fisheries, told Mongabay in an email that the U.K. has built a “comprehensive network for MPAs” and that the government has made “significant progress” in managing these protected areas since leaving the European Union. The progress she referred to included a recent ban on bottom-trawling gear for “site-specific features” such as dunes and reefs, within 13 offshore MPAs.
However, ocean advocates like Hugo Tagholm, executive director of Oceana U.K., said he believes there’s much more work to be done.
“We’ve got lots of marine protected areas here in the U.K. that are mapped out really well,” Tagholm told Mongabay in an interview. “But sadly, there is still far too much industrial fishing taking place in those spaces.”
Tagholm spearheaded the effort that examined a year’s worth of fishing activity in 63 offshore MPAs in the U.K. using data collected from Global Fishing Watch, an open-source platform created by Oceana, Google and Skytruth. Tagholm and his team were able to pinpoint when large vessels equipped with bottom-trawling gear were operating in offshore MPAs using satellite data and publicly available automatic identification system (AIS) data unique to each vessel. In addition to revealing the amount of time vessels spent in MPAs, the data also showed that the 10 large vessels responsible for much of the fishing activity came from outside the U.K.
Under the Fisheries Act 2020, both national and foreign vessels are permitted to fish in U.K. waters so long as they obtain a commercial fishing license through the Marine Management Organisation (MMO), a nondepartmental public body sponsored by DEFRA. Foreign vessels maintain a heavy presence in U.K. waters, with a high proportion coming from Spain, France and Norway. In 2022, nearly 67% of the total fish caught by foreign vessels lived near the seafloor, suggesting that these international operations may have a large impact on bottom-dwelling fish. By contrast, bottom-dwelling species comprised only 21% of the total catch by U.K. vessels in the same year. Regardless of which flag a ship sails under, national and foreign vessels are equally subject to the U.K.’s fishing laws.
Oceana’s exposition revealed that most of this commercial fishing activity focused on two MPAs in particular: the Southwest Deeps (East) and Western Channel, two biodiversity hotspots designated as marine conservation zones. The sandy seabed that characterizes the Southwest Deeps (East) MCZ provides habitat for an array of benthic organisms, including marine worms, cockles and clams. It’s a geologically unique area that houses the Celtic Sea Relict Seabeds, some of the largest shelf sea ridges in U.K. waters. The wind-formed sand dunes of the Western Channel MCZ are home to mollusks, echinoderms and sponges, as well as larger species like angler fish and spotted cat sharks.
When it comes to managing MCZs, the MMO may enact special byelaws, additional laws of local or limited application, that protect certain features or limit specific activities in some parts of the MPAs. However, being designated as an MCZ doesn’t automatically protect marine life from commercial fishing — including bottom trawling. This essentially means that unless special byelaws are issued for features within MCZs like the Western Channel and Southwest Deeps, the sea life in these areas is still subject to the impacts of trawling and dredging by national and foreign vessels.
Bottom trawling in MPAs
Across the world, bottom trawling hauls more than 19 million metric tons of fish and invertebrates to the surface each year — nearly a quarter of all wild-caught seafood — making it an extremely effective method for landing fish. However, due to its potential for indiscriminate capture of both target species and unintended bycatch, the practice is highly controversial.
“Bottom towed fishing gear is extremely detrimental to marine species and habitats and has significant negative impacts on marine biodiversity,” Amy Cartwright, project manager at University of Plymouth’s School of Biological and Marine Sciences, told Mongabay in an email. “It disturbs the seabed, damages sensitive habitats, and can result in bycatch of non-target species.”
Other researchers have echoed this sentiment over the years, expressing concern over the potential ecological impacts of bottom trawling. Yet, Mike Cohen, CEO of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations (NFFO), pointed out that the seabed is “naturally mobile and variable” and that trawling wouldn’t cause too much damage since the bottom can shift due to winds and currents.
“[Bottom trawling] has an impact, just like farming or driving a car,” Cohen told Mongabay in an interview, “but crucially, I don’t think it affects it beyond a manageable level, and we have to manage what we do in order to keep sustaining what we do.”
Regardless of the debate over bottom trawling, it’s a prevalent practice in the U.K., even within protected areas. According to the U.K.-based NGO Marine Conservation Society, this method of fishing occurs in 95% of the U.K.’s MPAs. And it’s not limited to the U.K.; in the EU, bottom trawling occurs in more than half of all marine protected areas.
Lance Morgan, president of the Marine Conservation Institute, a U.S.-based ocean conservation organization, said this may come as a surprise to many who assume MPAs offer an implied level of protection. “I think that’s kind of the perniciousness of this issue, is that we’ll call it a protected area, or a sanctuary, and people think that means something really great,” Morgan told Mongabay in an interview. “But they’re always really surprised when I tell them [an MPA] allows for bottom trawling and destructive forms of fishing.”
For Tagholm, Oceana’s exposition highlights the need to fortify the U.K.’s MPAs. “This expo shows again that [U.K. MPAs] are effectively paper parks, and they allow in the one big industry that is designed to kill and extract marine life from origin,” he said. “If that can take place in MPAs, it’s clearly contravening the intention of those spaces.”
“Paper parks” describe protected areas, whether at sea or on land, that look good on paper but fail to live up to their actual conservation objectives. Ineffective MPAs are a global issue, due to a combination of factors, including poor enforcement mechanisms, unclear management objectives, and inadequate communication between researchers and stakeholders.
According to Morgan, poorly managed MPAs and fisheries will lead to ecosystems becoming less resistant to climate change and offering fewer ecosystem benefits for future generations.
What’s next for the U.K.’s MPAs?
While DEFRA has enforced certain rules that will strictly protect some parts of the U.K.’s existing MPA protections, conservationists are calling for a broader application of these protections, saying they should extend beyond specific sites in MPAs.
“What we want to see is a full protection in these spaces,” Tagholm said, adding that full protection is essential for safeguarding rare marine life, biodiversity, and a sustainable fishing industry for years to come.
As Oceana U.K. and other environmental advocacy groups put pressure on legislators to give MPAs more teeth, fishers may have to navigate through additional restrictions in the future. For instance, the U.K. government announced earlier this year that that the MMO is aiming to protect all 54 U.K. offshore MPAs from “harmful fishing activity” by the end of 2024.
Cohen of the NFFO said he’s concerned that additional restrictions could put extra strain on those who make a living at sea and make it more difficult to pursue certain target species. At the same time, he said many fishers still recognize that sustainable fisheries are essential for keeping the industry alive.
“The thought of causing damage to this profession that they have grown up in is an anathema to fishermen,” Cohen said. “They have no intention of causing harm.”
For Tagholm, the benefits of stronger legislation would extend far beyond MPAs in the U.K. “Whether it’s the fishing industry or any other industry, we can’t fish the last fish or cut down the last tree and expect to keep thriving on this planet,” he said. “I’m committed to doing whatever we can to protect and restore our oceans.”
Banner image: A trawler docked in a harbour in Scotland. Image by dvdbramhall via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
How much carbon does ocean trawling put into the atmosphere?
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