D
evastating “bottom-trawling” fishing practices – which churn up the ocean floor, destroying “vital” seabed ecosystems and releasing carbon deposits – are taking place in 98 per cent of the UK’s marine protected areas, a disturbing report has warned.
The UK’s Marine Protected Areas are where environmentally damaging activities are supposedly restricted, to conserve habitats and wildlife, but a year-long study by experts at the Marine Conservation Society (MCS) has revealed industrial-scale fishing operations are continuing for thousands of hours a year in all but 5 per cent of these areas.
The MCS described the destruction as “equivalent to bulldozing a national park on land”, and is calling for a ban on bottom-trawling there.
