A Greenpeace investigation has reported that supertrawlers have doubled the time they spend fishing in UK MPAs in the first 6 months of 2020 compared to the whole of 2019. Click here. Last year these vessels, including the four largest supertrawlers in the world, spent 2,963 hours, the equivalent of 123 days fishing in UK Marine Protected areas. In the first six months of this year the number has risen to 5590 hours so far with 23 supertrawlers involved. This activity is currently legal but some in the fishing community have attributed this increase in activity to Britain’s impending departure from the EU.

In 2019 one of the most heavily fished MPAs was the Southern North Sea MPA created to safeguard porpoises which are particularly threatened by supertrawlers.

A Defra spokesperson said “Not all fishing activities in Marine Protected Areas require management – just those that are likely to damage the features of a site.  The UK is a global leader in the fight to protect our seas with our ‘Blue Belt’ of protected waters nearly twice the size of England. The Common Fisheries Policy currently restricts our ability to implement tougher protection, but leaving the EU and taking back control of our waters as an independent coastal state means we can introduce stronger measures” Click here.

Jerry Percy, director of the New Under Ten Fishermen’s Association, which represents fishing vessels less than 10m long, said the supertrawlers could have been trying to build up a track record to support claims for continued access in a post-Brexit fisheries agreement. He said the vessels should be required to have cameras and sensors to detect unwanted fish trapped in their nets.

Jean-Luc Solandt, of the Marine Conservation Society, said all trawlers should be banned from protected areas, not just those over 100m. He estimated that fish stocks would double within a decade outside protected areas if fishing was banned in 30 per cent of waters, giving the industry a long-term supply.

The Pelagic Freezer-trawler Association, which represents the nine Dutch-owned vessels that fished in the areas, said most of the protected features were on the seabed and not affected by nets. It added that its members used acoustic devices to scare dolphins and porpoises away.

Greenpeace has launched a petition calling the government for a ban on supertrawlers in the UK’s Marine Protected Areas.

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