In this column, Callum Roberts, marine biologist and Professor of Marine Conservation at the University of Exeter looks to discuss the issue of bottom trawling in British MPAs, why it happens, why politicians allow it, and just how counter-intuitive it is to healthy, thriving domestic waters.
Given how bad trawling and dredging are for marine life, why on earth would any body create a protected area that didn’t exclude these industrial activities?
Well, the answer to that is to look into the minds of the politicians who have established them. On the one hand, they have the conservationists saying “we need to protect the sea”. On the other hand, they have the fishing industry saying “lf you restrict our access to any part of our fishing grounds, we are going to suffer.”
Always looking to play the dealmaker, the politician thinks they can satisfy both groups by creating a marine protected area and then allowing them to be fished.
So, we end up with these marine areas that are nominally protected for wildlife, but they are industrially exploited and often to greater intensities than unprotected areas around them. So, we end up with the worst of both worlds. We have paper parks that are not doing anything and we have industrial fishing taking place in those parks that are not benefitting from the recovery of fish stocks that protected areas could create.
And that is through the spillover effect…
In his latest column for Oceanographic, Professor Callum Roberts, head of marine biology at the University of Exeter and a scientific advisor on the film, Ocean with David Attenborough, talks us through the issues with trawling and dredging in marine protected areas.
Find out more in his video column below:
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