The Guardian view on fishing and nature: bottom-trawling boats don’t belong in conservation zones | Editorial

UP at 90% of the bottom of the ocean around Great Britain is covered with sand and gravel, derived from the erosion of the shell and the rocks. Other more unusual habitats include the Maerl beds, sea herbaries and Varech forests. These biodiversity landscapes house 330 species of fish, as well as seals, hippocamples and thousands of less known species – which share them with offshore energy, fishing and shipping industries.

An increased awareness of pollution of wastewater and plastics means that the public knows more about marine conservation than before. For his 99th anniversary this year, the broadcaster and naturalist Sir David Attentborough made a film, Ocean, in which he described the seas as the “greatest survival system on the planet”, and urged people to find themselves behind efforts to protect and renew marine nature.

But despite an energetic campaign against the wastewater discharges by water companies, a problem that presented the general elections of last year, and valuable local volunteer efforts such as the Seahorse Survey in the Studland Bay of Dorset, an increased concern for the state of the seas has not delivered a robust national framework and clearly understood for underwater conservation. This week, the government has rejected a recommendation from the environmental audit committee of the Parliament that the bottom trafficker by fishing boats should be prohibited in protected marine areas (AMP). It was a mistake and a sign of the distance to follow.

The EU aims to completely ban fishing equipment in the MPAS by 2030. Sweden and Greece have already taken front. These weighted nets damage the flora as well as the collection of the fauna when it is dragged through the sea bed. Sir David compared their utility to “the bulldozer a tropical forest”. Currently, their use is only prohibited by the British government – which shares the responsibility for the conservation of the Marines with the deconounced administrations – in three areas, including Allonby Bay off the coast of Cumbria. These obtained additional protections in 2023 and classified as “highly protected”.

Emma Reynolds, the environment secretary, has only been in the office for a week. She should review the decision to let this destructive form of fishing continue in the AMPs. But the government’s challenge also widens. Fragmented leadership, a low planning framework and a lack of capacity to initiate stakeholders mean that marine conservation in the United Kingdom is far from where it should be, given what we know about the importance of oceans to counter global heating and loss of fauna.

A stronger governance and regulation of the marine landscape may seem dry and arcane. But the Environment Committee is right to say that a department should have the global responsibility for the delicate arbitration task between different interest groups – tourists, fishermen, offshore wind. The current situation is chaotic and as Mike Cohen says of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organizations, “not everyone can have everything”. The financing of an ecological surveillance scheme in Lyme Bay must be restored so that research can continue.

While the objective of protecting 30% of British waters by 2030 seems to be distant, sea areas are not the only ones where conservation efforts vacillate. A new analysis by a wildlife charity suggests that a narrowed part of England has effective protections in place. While the planning bill scrambles its way to Parliament, the protections of nature should be reinforced. The new secretary of the environment must also create momentum around the conservation of the navies.

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