Preventing fish trawling

By preventing fish trawling, bycatch and much damage to the seabed (including coral reefs) would be avoided.

Bottom trawlers can be huge. The Margiris is an 180 metre trawler, nicknamed the ‘Death Star’, capable of catching hundreds of thousands of tonnes of fish at a time. It’s been banned in Australia since 2013 but is yet to be outlawed in British or European waters (2024).

Bottom trawling was banned at Dogger Bank in the North Sea in 2023.

The EU Ocean Action Plan should ban bottom trawling in marine protected areas by 2030 but the trawling industry has mobilised against this law through the European Bottom Fisheries Alliance EBFA, which was created by Europeche, the European fishing industry lobby.