Almost 40% of England’s seas are designated as marine protected areas. Their purpose, the government says, is “to protect and recover rare threatened and important marine ecosystems … from damage caused by human activities”.
And yet in the four years to 2024, trawlers using vast nets, including those that scour the seabed, caught more than 1.3m tonnes of fish within them, according to official figures that campaigners say show they are “little more than lines on a map”.
“The government claims vast areas of UK waters are protected, but the reality is a national scandal,” said Chris Thorne, senior oceans campaigner at Greenpeace UK.