Marine Protected Areas: Fishing Vessels

(asked on 28th June 2021) - View Source

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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, with reference to the Government’s plan to introduce management measures in 40 English offshore Marine Protected Areas (MPA) over the next three years, whether the Government has made an assessment of the potential benefits to mobile fish stocks of banning supertrawlers from the offshore MPA network.


Answered by
Victoria Prentis Portrait
Victoria Prentis
Attorney General
This question was answered on 5th July 2021

Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are a devolved competency and the information provided therefore relates to England only.

We will manage fishing within existing, sustainable use MPAs to ensure recovery of the features to a good, healthy condition, and will designate Highly Protected Marine Areas to allow full recovery. We are developing ambitious plans to protect our existing MPAs from any fishing activity that could prevent them achieving their conservation objectives, such as trawling on the seabed. 98 MPAs in inshore waters have management measures in place to protect sensitive features from bottom towed fishing gears. All existing MPAs in our offshore waters will be protected from fishing as required through a three-year programme being undertaken by the Marine Management Organisation.

Supertrawlers generally target pelagic species of fish within the water column and are unlikely to damage the seabed habitats for which most MPAs are designated. We are currently reviewing our policy on these vessels and working to develop more robust management of non-quota stocks which these vessels are targeting, as well as quota stocks.

Reticulating Splines