Government proposals to ban damaging fishing in Dogger Bank could be a first step to the recovery of a rich array of wildlife, conservationists have said.
Under proposed bye-laws put out for consultation by the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) on Monday, bottom trawling would be prohibited in four English offshore marine protected areas, including Dogger Bank.
Campaigners said the move to properly protect the conservation areas would help preserve important habitats such as sandbanks, coral gardens and reefs and the wildlife they support, and boost fish stocks.
But they warned that properly conserving four marine protected areas was just the “tip of the iceberg” in the scale of the challenge to reverse declines in marine wildlife, and called for more urgent action.
Ban on destructive bottom trawling to protect English cold-water coral
Conservationists welcomed the plans but said more needed to be done to protect other areas where trawling would still be allowed
1 February 2021 • 6:16pm
Common starfish and sea anemones on ross worm at Dogger Bank in the North Sea
Credit: JNCC/PA
The first widespread bottom-trawling ban in protected English waters has been proposed by the government in an attempt to protect cold-water coral.
A consultation launched on Monday proposed barring the damaging fishing practice from four Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) including the Canyons, a deep sea habitat off the coast of Cornwall which contains a cold water coral reef and coral gardens.
BBC News
By Roger Harrabin
Two of the UK’s most sensitive fishing sites are set to receive better protection.
The Marine Management Organisation says it plans to safeguard fishing areas in Dogger Bank and South Dorset by completely banning bottom trawling.
The sites are already designated as protected areas, but in reality they are not patrolled - and they’re both over-fished.
Greenpeace recently dropped concrete blocks on to Dogger Bank.
The intention was to deter bottom trawling. Another group, Blue Marine, took legal action to try to safeguard the sea bed.
Bottom trawling is a destructive type of fishing which involves dragging weighted nets across the sea floor.
Mark Carney is the UN special envoy for climate and finance and an adviser to Boris Johnson on Cop26. Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP
The leaders of two UK environmental charities have written to Mark Carney, the UN climate envoy and former governor of the Bank of England, to raise concerns over a blueprint for carbon offsetting that could result in billions of new carbon credits being sold around the world.
Carney presented plans at the virtual Davos meeting of global business and political leaders on Wednesday evening for vast increases in the number of carbon offsets sold, aiming to expand the market from about $300m at present to between $50bn and $100bn a year.
Many of the UK’s leading supermarket chains are “treading water” in the fight against plastic pollution, new research reveals. The third annual plastics survey, conducted by the London-based Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA) and Greenpeace UK, shows that the 10 leading supermarkets collectively put almost 900,000 tonnes of plastic packaging on the market in 2019. However, while the 896,853 tonnes was a reduction of 1.6% on 2018, it equates to a 1.2% increase compared to 2017.