Climate News: UK government proposes expanding ban on destructive bottom trawling

The government is considering a wider ban on bottom trawling, a destructive fishing method, across English waters. If implemented, the amendment would increase the ban on bottom trawling from 18,000km² to 48,000km² of the UK’s protected offshore areas.

According to ocean conservation group Oceana, bottom trawling is “one of the most destructive methods to catch fish” and often causes “irreversible damage” to marine ecosystems. The method uses large, weighted nets and chains to effectively clear everything living from a designated area of the ocean. However, trawlers are often only interested in a select species or two. The increased use of this method to meet the demands of commercial quotas is causing unprecedented damage to fragile ecosystems, such as cold-water corals, and the unnecessary capture, injury, and death of untargeted species.

The proposal to expand the ban follows Sir David Attenborough’s exposure of the true harms of bottom trawling in his most recent documentary Ocean, in which he showed footage of trawling nets destroying entire ecosystems in minutes.

[The Marine Management Organisation] has estimated that the annual cost for UK businesses will be £530,000, but the benefit “over the 20-year appraisal period” will be approximately £3.1 billion

The government says that its proposed measures would “protect rare marine animals, as well as the delicate seabeds […] from indiscriminate and potentially irreversible damage”.

Before the proposed amendments would come into effect, there will be a 12-week formal consultation, set to end on September 1. The measures do not just include greater restrictions on trawling, but also on fishing traps and bottom set nets and lines.

The Marine Management Organisation (MMO) has assessed the socioeconomic impacts of these measures on the UK population. It estimated that the annual cost for UK businesses will be £530,000, but the benefit over a “20-year appraisal period” will be approximately £3.1 billion. Wider benefits also include “enhanced environmental protection”, “enhanced fish populations”, and “nutrient cycling and climate regulation”.

Environment Secretary Steve Reed said: “Without urgent action, our oceans will be irreversibly destroyed […] The government is taking decisive action to ban destructive bottom trawling where appropriate.”