Last Monday, a group of environmental organizations from the UK and the EU sent a petition to Defra’s headquarters in London, starting a campaign against demersal trawling throughout Europe. The petition was submitted by a variety of NGOs having a presence in the UK, including the Environmental Justice Foundation, the Blue Marine Foundation, the massive US-based NGO Oceana, and the Transform Bottom Trawling Coalition. Signatures were gathered from throughout Europe. They won’t be giving it to you for long! The petition is then anticipated to cross the Channel and be presented similarly to ministries in the Netherlands, France, Spain, and Germany before being delivered to the EU fisheries commissioner in January. The Defra headquarters was only the first of many such “handovers.”
The growing threat of bottom trawling
To “protect vital ecosystems from harm,” the petition demands that bottom trawling be immediately prohibited in Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). In all MPAs, even those set aside to safeguard pelagic species like porpoises or in regions of highly mobile silt that are frequently disturbed by wave action, the campaign seeks to outlaw demersal trawling. However, some of the campaign’s language, such as the reference to “destructive” trawling, indicates that the coalition of NGOs is rather brittle, bringing together groups that want to restrict trawling to larger, heavier trawls on the most vulnerable habitats and those that want to stop all trawling.
“Small-scale fishers and fish workers are on the frontlines of the ocean emergency,”
stated Tom Collinson, advocacy manager at Blue Ventures, the UK non-governmental organization that coordinates the Transform Bottom Trawling Coalition, which consists of 98 organizations that include associations for small-scale fishing. Their livelihoods are most severely impacted when pollution, overfishing, and warming waters damage marine life. “To save our seas and the communities who rely on them, the UK government must act now. The first step should be to prohibit industrial bottom trawling, the most damaging practice, from sensitive protected regions.
What is bottom trawling?
Despite being scheduled to fall on World Fisheries Day, the UK event also served to draw attention to the continuing evaluation of submissions to the recent consultation on controlling demersal fishing in 13 of the UK’s MPAs, both inside and outside the MMO. The ad also draws attention to the UK’s long-standing goal of protecting 30% of the ocean by 2030. The designation of sizable portions of the UK’s overseas territories, such as Chagos in the Indian Ocean and the 844,000 km2 surrounding the remote island of Pitcairn in the Pacific, has been the primary step in attempts to date to fulfill this goal.
“After their stunt last week, it appears that American lobbying giant Oceana has now joined American multi-billion dollar plastic clothing manufacturer Patagonia in their latest bid to tell us little people what to do,”
NFFO chief executive Mike Cohen told Fishing News. This is nothing more than a diversion during the crucial yearly negotiations that will decide our catching opportunities for the upcoming year: more scheming by privileged outsiders looking to further stifle democracy by using their connections and wealth.
Damage to Marine ecosystems
Evidence, not conjecture or hyperbole, should be the foundation of contemporary fisheries management. Many of the arbitrary lines on a map that make up the MPA network that burden the fishing communities in the UK are justified by the advocates’ failure to explain how bottom trawling will impact highly mobile sediments, sea birds, or harbor porpoises. “You would think that if they genuinely felt that fishing is harming these creatures, they would want to explain how, after all, we’ve asked them too frequently. Because we depend on the marine environment for our livelihood, the fishing sector has a strong stake in keeping it healthy. On the other side, these lobbyists are interested in creating a sense of crisis and inciting anger since, without one, it is impossible to improve your company’s environmental standing or attract even larger corporate donations.
A unified front against bottom trawling
Ocean advocacy campaigners have referred to Marine Protected Areas in the UK’s seas as “nothing but meaningless lines on a map” and urged the British government to immediately and completely outlaw bottom-trawl fishing in some of the most vital and vulnerable marine areas in the nation. End bottom-trawl fishing now before it’s too late or fail to protect vulnerable biodiversity and livelihoods dependent on healthy seas, campaigners from a coalition of ocean advocacy NGOs traveled to London this week to deliver a clear message from concerned citizens across the UK and Europe to the Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA). Nearly 200,000 people from all over the UK and Europe signed a petition that was hand-delivered to the UK government department this week. The petition calls for a ban on destructive fishing methods as well as prompt and efficient action to revive more sustainable fishing that is supported by the nation’s small fishermen industry. A group of NGOs that support the ocean, including the Transform Bottom Trawling Coalition, Oceana UK, the Blue Marine Foundation, the Environmental Justice Foundation, and the outdoor company Patagonia, delivered the petition.
