UK to Ban Bottom Trawling in Marine Protected Areas

As the UN Ocean Conference kicks off in Nice, France this week, UK government is set to announce a ban on bottom trawling in its marine protected areas (MPAs). For years, environmental campaigners have been calling for government action against bottom trawling, which is associated with large-scale destruction of seafloor habitats.

In an editorial in the Observer newspaper, British secretary of state for environment Steve Reed said that he will be announcing in the UN Ocean Conference on the government’s plans to ban bottom trawling. The ban will apply across 41 MPAs of the English seas spanning 30,000 square kilometers. Earlier, Minister for Water Emma Hardy said that the government is committed to stopping bottom trawling on areas that damage the MPAs.

In recent years, the UK government has established 178 MPAs covering nearly 900,000 square kilometers of English waters. However, most of these areas are multi-use, meaning that activities that damage the environment can take place if they do not directly impact the specified protected features.

Damaging and extractive activities are only banned in Highly Protected Areas, of which the UK has just three. This forms the basis for the recent calls to have the government expand the network for the highly protected areas to 10% of UK waters by 2030.

The announcement by Reed comes days after UK MPs endorsed the ban on bottom trawling. In a report by the cross-party House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee, the MPs called on government to ban activities that damage UK’s seabed in the offshore MPAs. In the report, the committee recommends relevant ministries to issue a statement no later than January 2026, and clearly set out government’s priorities for marine usage - including how it plans to balance marine exploitation and protection.

In an analysis last year, environmental campaign group Oceana said that UK’s MPAs are highly affected by bottom trawling. Out of over 100,000 hours of industrial fishing that took place in UK’s MPAs in 2023, 33,000 hours were from vessels carrying destructive bottom-towed gear, such as bottom trawls and dredges.