This shockingly destructive practice urgently needs to stop.
Greenpeace has announced plans to drop boulders into areas of the sea protected for wildlife in an attempt to block what it describes as “destructive industrial fishing”.
READ: THE CATCH
The campaign group said the British Government has failed to protect England’s marine protected areas (MPAs) from damaging practices, including bottom trawling, which sees habitats destroyed by heavy nets being dragged along the seafloor.
The action marks the latest in a string of underwater “boulder barriers” after Greenpeace dropped concrete blocks into English MPAs for three years from 2020 to protect their rare species and ecosystems.
Protect
Ministers were given stronger post-Brexit powers to protect MPAs in 2020 but bottom trawling has largely continued in these locations.
Last year, the government announced proposals to end bottom trawling in a further 41 MPAs but ruled out a “disproportionate” blanket ban across all protected areas.
But Greenpeace said ministers have yet to act since consulting on these and if they do come into force, other damaging forms of trawling would still be allowed across these sites.
Will McCallum, co-executive director at Greenpeace UK, said: “Post-Brexit powers to fully protect marine protected areas have been available to successive governments for the last five years but all have sat back and let destructive industrial fishing continue.
“Our oceans cannot wait any longer. If this government won’t protect our seas, we will.”
Brink
The campaign group has long criticised the MPAs process as “piecemeal” because only the use of certain fishing gear types are restricted in certain areas, rather than site-wide bans that cover all destructive fishing.
Just 17 of the UK’s 78 offshore MPAs are currently afforded some kind of protection from industrial fishing, according to the group.
The new underwater “boulder barrier” will be created in a location Greenpeace has yet to reveal.
As part of the action, Greenpeace has sent a letter to Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, which has been signed by Stephen Fry, Paloma Faith and Simon Pegg as well as a host of ocean conservation organisations.
It argued that UK seas are being “pushed to the brink” by industrial fishing vessels, which ultimately damage economic opportunity in coastal communities by emptying protected areas of fish and killing wildlife such as sharks, dolphins and sea birds.
Fallen
“Years later, the places we created barriers are still protected while successive governments have failed to stop the rampant destruction of the vast majority of so-called marine protected areas,” it reads.
“This leaves us no choice but to step in again. Using our ships, we will create more boulder barriers to repel destructive industrial trawlers and turn the UK’s weak marine protected areas into proper protected ocean sanctuaries.”
Faith said: “It’s hard to understand how this has been allowed to continue for so long.
“I’m grateful that Greenpeace are taking action where governments have repeatedly fallen short.”
Concrete
Fry said: “Permitting industrial trawlers to continue plundering areas of the ocean designated for protection is not merely absurd; it’s a complete failure of common sense.
"This shockingly destructive practice urgently needs to stop.”
Pegg said: “Properly protecting our marine protected areas isn’t complicated. All the paperwork was done years ago and yet the Government is still delaying.
“I’m delighted that Greenpeace are taking the matter into their own hands and taking real, concrete, action – quite literally.”
An Environment Department (Defra) spokesperson said: “We have strict legislation in place to protect our marine environment that also supports sustainable fishing to help industry and local communities thrive."
This Author
Rebecca Speare-Cole is the sustainability reporter at Press Association.
