Keith Hiscock comments. Attention to has been drawn to the issue of trawlers bringing up boulders from the seabed by the recent Greenpeace campaign on the Dogger Bank. Many trawlermen are not surprised – if nevertheless annoyed – to pick-up boulders in their nets. They may have fallen-out of a glacier or melting iceberg (‘glacial erratics’) but, more likely, the boats were deliberately fishing close to a rocky reef and picked-up a piece that had fallen off. I have frequently seen boulders with remains of marine life attached outside of Plymouth Fish Market as I cycled into town. Caught in bottom trawls and (I am told) may be sold-on to garden centres as garden features.

There is a view among the Plymouth fishermen that boulders of the size Greenpeace are using won’t stop the fishing. So, sorry Greenpeace, it will have to be a sunken bus/shipping container/frigate to disrupt towed bottom gear although I hope your message is received and understood by authorities. The impressive extent of designated marine protected areas is not being managed to protect fisheries or biodiversity – they are ‘paper parks’.  The fisheries Minister Victoria Prentis has admitted to Parliament that damage to offshore MPAs will continue after Brexit.