9 June 2025
The Government announcement on the 9th June 2025, proposing a complete ban on bottom trawl activities in Round 3 MCZs ignores the scientific approach used for previous rounds and the social and economic principles in the Fisheries Act
It is hard to believe that the let-down of the government’s capitulation to the EU could pale almost into insignificance in a matter of days, but it has. Ministers and government-backing commentators were keen to tell us that we didn’t lose anything from that submission to the EU (we did, of course: see HERE) but there is no doubt this time. The Secretary of State for the Environment announced, via a handful of friendly newspapers and the social media posts of environmental lobbying groups, that the government intends to ban bottom trawling across 41 Marine Protected Areas.
Of course, most people would immediately think such a thing was sensible. It sounds so easy, and so positive, doesn’t it? And if it isn’t obvious to you, why then there is a multi-million-pound publicity campaign, backed by an Australian mining billionaire and lobbying groups funded by a couple of American social influence foundations that got their billions from oil drilling, to tell you how obvious it is. Who would dare to disagree when national treasures like David Attenborough and Stephen Fry have been wheeled out to attack fishermen from the privilege of the pedestals they sit on: utterly above criticism and the unimportant little people their barbs are aimed at.
Only a few weeks ago, our government was talking to the fishing industry about new management measures for MPAs that would be based on scientific evidence and would focus on restricting fishing over the particular features that might be damaged by it, while allowing it to continue in those parts of an MPA that fishing does not affect. A case can be made for a features-based approach like this, backed by evidence that harm is being done and that stopping fishing will reduce it. All that has gone out the window, now, however. Without any notice to fishermen or their representatives, the government has announced that it will close whole sites to bottom-trawling even though they know that trawling does no damage to large parts of those sites.
The campaigning has worked. The unimaginably wealthy have spoken. Reality doesn’t matter anymore. This ban will cause huge hardship to fishermen and their families and it will advance the cause of marine conservation no more than a far more targeted restriction would do. Coastal communities, working people, and the truth do not matter to this government, however. Our lives are a price they are willing to pay if it buys them an opportunity to curry favour with celebrities and the super wealthy and to pander to their supporters’ feelings about the environment, irrespective of the facts.
This is an astonishing attack on fishermen and coastal communities, from a government that already seems determined to go to war with farmers and rural communities. Before the election, they claimed that “food security is national security”. By that token, the harm they are bent on doing to the former would seem to suggest that they don’t really care very much about the latter.
Today, we learned more about a consultation on the proposed ban. Since the Environment Secretary has already gone on record about “the government’s plans to ban bottom trawling across 41 protected areas of English seas spanning 30,000 square kilometres”, however, anyone could be forgiven for doubting the sincerity of this ‘consultation’. Defra has already announced that “Evidence on the impact of social and economic impacts of the proposals may help in reshaping the proposals, but only insofar as is consistent with the MMO’s legal duties to support the achievement of MPA conservation objectives”. What a mockery this makes of the Fisheries Act and its requirement to balance social, economic, environmental and food production factors. MPA objectives are so broadly drawn and so vague, and so little work has been done to survey the real state on many of these sites, that almost any action could be justified by them. To say that the outcome of this consultation appears to be a foregone conclusion, is to put it mildly.
Fishermen and their representatives tried to affect government policy the hard way. By responding to endless consultations; by giving up days at sea to join – unpaid – working groups, forums, and meetings; by conducting, supporting, and funding research into new techniques and new technologies; by showing our willingness to coexist with other sectors and interests. In short, by patiently and carefully working out the best thing to do and then trying to persuade our government to make a decision based on the facts.
How stupid. We should have just got a billionaire to buy it for us.
Influence may be all in our post-truth age, but it is fickle. Campaigns come and go and so do governments. Beneath it all, however, there is an underlying reality that fisheries and conservation scientists work to describe and understand. Some of the leading names in that field have spoken out against untargeted, unscientific measures like the one this government is bent on forcing upon us. In chasing cheap and fleeting popularity, they are not just opposing fishermen and their communities, they are opposing some of the most significant scientific voices in their field. They are opposing the truth, and that matters.
Basing policy on these false foundations sets a terribly dangerous precedent. It will not produce outcomes that work for the environment and it will be devastating for the fishing families whose lives and livelihoods it ruins. And it will still not satisfy the campaigners. They will be back for more – if not from our industry, then from another. As long as someone with wealth and a desire to greenwash their actions is willing to pay them, the campaigners will never stop.
They have come for us today. Be warned: they may come for you tomorrow.