The Wildlife Trusts have been overwhelmed with responses following a call for the views of members of the public on the banning of bottom trawling at sea and asking people to add their voice to the government's recent consultation.
Bottom trawling is a destructive form of fishing which involves dragging weighted nets along the seabed. These destroy almost everything in their path.
Earlier this summer the UK Government announced a consultation on plans to stop this practice in 41 offshore Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in English waters which had already been designated as protected sites due to the importance of their seabed habitats.
Management of this fishing activity in these MPAs should have been implemented when these sites were designated, most over ten years ago.
The Wildlife Trusts received 18,425 responses to their campaign, one of the highest numbers ever received for a marine issue. Each individual response was emailed to the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) and the Minster for Water and Flooding Emma Hardy, who had initiated the consultation.
Ruth Williams, head of marine policy at The Wildlife Trusts, said:
“We are indebted to everyone who took the time to respond to the consultation. The public, conservation charities and MPs in the Commons have all expressed their horror that bottom trawling, which decimates delicate habitats and structures like cold water reefs, is still allowed to happen in our nature reserves at sea. With the consultation now closed, we urge the minister to do the right thing and ban the practice in these MPAs so that nature has a chance to recover.”
One member of the public who responded said, “If we call ourselves ethical beings, how can we justify using such an indiscriminate and destructive method of fishing?”
Another reported that ‘knowing bottom trawling had been stopped would be joyful’. A diver from Sheffield said, “If this happened on land, where people could see it, they’d be up in arms.”
In a House of Commons debate recently on the High Seas Treaty*, MPs backed an outright ban on bottom trawling, saying that ‘large factory ships now plunder the ocean as if it were a bottomless pit of profit.’
The Wildlife Trusts warmly welcomed the consultation on proposals to ban bottom trawling in our offshore MPAs and raised two key points in its official response:
- The entirety of each MPA must be free from bottom trawling, not just limited areas within its boundaries which have protected features. This is for two reasons. First, the marine environment is dynamic and features under the sea such as Ross worm reefs (sediments containing dense colonies of worms) shift in position. Second, feature maps can be inaccurate.
- The offshore area begins at 6 nautical miles (nm) out at sea. Inshore of this boundary fisheries are managed by the Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities, outside by the Marine Management Organisation. Some MPAs cross this 6nm boundary and where they overlap, there are some gaps in management which is leading to confusion. A joined-up approach is needed.
Ruth Williams says:
“Marine ecosystems have an incredible ability to recover when they are left alone – so taking a whole site approach would make a huge difference. In Lyme Bay, when features based protection from bottom towed gears was introduced, marine life increased by 15%. When a whole-site prohibition was introduced, marine life increased by 95%.
Film footage of huge nets being dragged along the seabed, killing marine species indiscriminately, was included in Sir David Attenborough’s emotive film Ocean, released earlier in 2025.