New report finds that just two Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) out of 113 in the UK ban bottom-trawl fishing across the whole site
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Just two out of 113 Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in the UK ban the highly destructive practice of bottom-trawl fishing across the whole site, a new report by Oceana UK has found.
These MPAs are designated to protect dolphins, porpoises, whales and seabirds, but bottom trawling can lead to issues from entanglement to prey depletion. For example, one harbour porpoise sanctuary in the North Sea was subjected to more than 30,000 hours of apparent bottom trawling in 2025 alone.
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Bottom trawlers drag heavy metal gear and nets – weighing up to several tonnes – across the seafloor to capture fish. The process is popular with commercial fishing companies, as it makes it easy to catch large quantities of fish. It is especially rampant in areas designed to safeguard some of Britain’s most beloved wildlife such as puffins and porpoises.
Dragging this gear across the seabed creates underwater noise, disrupting feeding for both species that rely on sound to hunt and seabirds such as puffins and terns, which use sight. It is widely considered one of the most destructive fishing methods because of its indiscriminate nature: non-target marine life such as dolphins and porpoises are regularly captured.
Bottom trawling also releases carbon back into the atmosphere. On the seafloor of the UK and Isle of Man, 240 million tonnes of carbon are stored within the top 10cm of sediments. When gear is dragged across these carbon-rich sediments, carbon dioxide is released.
In other countries, bottom trawling can pull up vast swathes of coral. In New Zealand, commercial fishers removed nearly 200 tonnes of coral from the seabed over a 13-year period, with bottom trawling accounting for 99 per cent of this total.
Currently, no UK MPAs designated for porpoises, whales or dolphins are fully protected from bottom trawling across their entire sites, and only two exist for seabirds.
According to the UK Government’s own assessments, bottom trawling is a threat in 75 per cent of these MPAs.
‘Areas designated to protect some of our most iconic species are still allowing a destructive activity that the government’s own assessments identify as a threat. This raises a serious question about the credibility of the UK’s marine protection measures and the true extent of its ambitions,’ said executive director of Oceana UK Hugo Tagholm.
‘The UK has promised to effectively protect 30 per cent of the ocean by 2030, but there is a risk of bold targets being reduced to little more than blue washing. If we are serious about meeting that commitment, protection must exist in practice, not just on paper,’ Tagholm continued.
