Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to ensure super trawlers report marine mammal by-catch to the Marine Management Organisation.

This Government are committed to protecting our wildlife and putting nature on the road to recovery. Defra are working to improve monitoring and understanding of bycatch incidences as part of the Bycatch Mitigation Initiative. This includes continued annual estimates of marine mammal bycatch mortality through the Bycatch Monitoring Programme and work to look at barriers to bycatch reporting under the Clean Catch project.