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FROSTY’S RAMBLINGS Leave the scallops at the bottom of the deep blue sea

PETER FROST is throwing stones – and big ones at that – onto the Dogger Bank to stop the ecocidal trawlers

THE shallow seas around our coasts have a rich variety of wildlife, some of it valuable as food.

Perhaps the most valuable single catch is scallops. Unsurprisingly then, it is scallop-dredging that is thought to have the most severe ecological effect of all British marine fisheries because the damage and mortality it causes the seabed and species that live there.

Greenpeace’s ship the Esperanza is dumping huge granite boulders to build an underwater barrier to protect almost 50 square miles of the Dogger Bank Special Area of Conservation from seabed trawling after the government failed to commit to properly protect the area.

Greenpeace’s ship, the Esperanza, on the high seas
Greenpeace’s ship, the Esperanza, on the high seas

The boulder barrier will prevent destructive “bottom-trawling.”

This fishing method drags huge heavy metal trawls across the seabed, sweeping up all plants and fish and leaving a flattened, barren, dead landscape.

Some of the boulders being dumped by Greenpeace activists have been signed by celebrity supporters including Alison Steadman, Alison Sudol, Bonnie Wright, Robert Lindsay, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Stephen Fry.

Lots of other creatures frequent this part of the sea too, including seals, cod, pollock, haddock, dogfish and all kinds of seabirds. There’s even an occasional whale sighting, although these are rare.

The new boulder barrier is in the Offshore Brighton Marine Protected Area (MPA). It’s about 45 kilometres off the coast of Sussex, right on the border between British and French waters.

The protected area was set up by the government in 2016, supposedly to safeguard 862 square kilometres of seabed habitat.

Hermit crabs, scallops, starfish, sponges, sea worms and anemones live on the seabed there and the area is a vital feeding ground for predators like porpoises and dolphins.

Other than the new Greenpeace boulder barrier, there are no restrictions on industrial fishing in the Offshore Brighton MPA.

If you think that makes no sense in an area which is supposed to be protected, you’re right. Sadly, this is the case for many of Britain’s so-called MPAs.

This lack of real protection means all sorts of destructive industrial fishing boats can operate. In 2019, bottom-trawlers spent 3,099 hours fishing here, making it one of Britain’s most heavily bottom-trawled “protected areas.”

Greenpeace has revealed that bottom-trawlers frequently operate illegally by switching their electronic positioning systems off, a breach of international and British law which endangers the safety of other mariners. The government has failed to take any action since Greenpeace brought this to light.

Chris Thorne, a Greenpeace oceans campaigner on board the Esperanza, told us: “If our government is not willing to commit to proper protection for the Dogger Bank and the rest of the Britain’s Marine Protected Areas, we are forced to continue doing all that we can to prevent bottom-trawling from destroying this vital marine habitat.

“We will not sit idly by while our oceans are destroyed. Our government continues to hide behind vague statements about its desire to protect our oceans sometime in the future. Enough is enough.

“Boris Johnson has said more fine words about protecting our environment at the UN, committing to 30 per cent protection on land but nearly half of our most important wildlife sites are already at risk having not been monitored for years.

“He’s also already committed to protecting 30 per cent of our oceans, but if the Prime Minister fails to lay out concrete plans for delivering on these targets, then his fine words are meaningless. They aren’t worth the paper they’re written on.”

Scallops and those miniature lobsters or Nephrops, better known variously as langoustine, Dublin Bay prawns, or Norway lobster, make up that multimillion-pound catch.

Post-Brexit problems have almost shut down this trade — first with transport hold-ups and then the French markets not buying British fish.

Although these species can be caught in a few different ways, most scallops are caught by dredgers and most prawns are caught from bottom-trawlers.

If like me you love scallops, don’t despair: there are perfectly ethically fished scallops available. They are hand harvested by divers. Yes, they are more expensive, but you can eat them with a clear conscience.

Even more importantly this sustainable method of scallop fishing means we can be eating scallops for decades to come. Bottom-dredging may well see this beautiful and delicious fish become totally extinct.

Scallop dredgers in Britain use heavy-toothed dredges that can weigh more than two tonnes and penetrate four inches (10cm) into the seabed.

They are an inefficient way of capturing scallops so dredgers often need to do a second run, exacerbating the initial impacts they have on the seabed.

Powerful ships and heavy wires can be towed over most seabed types, including areas of rocky reef, but mostly the ships target areas of sands, gravels and cobbles where the scallops are found in large numbers.

Hopefully Greenpeace’s boulders will make seabed dredging impossible.

Shell, sponge and coral beds along with other biogenic habitats like kelp and seagrass beds are normally considered the most sensitive seabed environments.

Coral-like maerl is among the most vulnerable with 70 per cent being removed from an area by a single dredge tow. Recovery takes many decades.

Sponges, like the elephant hide sponge also suffer and, in places where dredging is permitted in the Sound of Jura and Firth of Clyde, have nearly all been damaged.

These and other slow-growing sponges and soft corals can take up to 10 years to recover from a single dredging.

 Goatchurch / Creative Commons)
Flame shells (Pic: Goatchurch / Creative Commons)

Mollusc species like flame shells are capable of building large reefs and beds important for the wider ecosystem but again, a single pass can entirely remove a flame shell bed.

Just one pass with a dredge can sometimes be just as damaging as persistent dredging.

While scallop-dredging is considered to be the most damaging marine fishery, prawn trawling comes in a close second.

Scottish prawn trawls cause a larger amount of disruption beneath the top inch or so (2cm) of seabed than any other European fishery.

Langoustine trawls are wide-mouthed nets, weighted to fall to the seabed and often fitted with “rock-hoppers” or heavy rubber wheels to help them to bounce over seabeds without snagging on rocks.

Some species and habitats can and do recover, but only when there is sufficient time between trawls. Trawling is patchily distributed and this means that there are some areas which are very heavily impacted.

As well as having an immediate impact, dredge and trawl fisheries have the potential to alter seabed habitats in ways that affect the entire ecosystem.

 Arran Coast / Creative Commons)
Coral-like maerl is in fact a red algae (Pic: Arran Coast / Creative Commons)

The diversity of the seabed habitat is important for many species’ reproduction; dead shells, rock crevices and maerl reefs act as shelters for small mobile animals, including small but important fish-prey species such as mud lobsters. Juvenile cod actively select seagrass beds as nursery grounds.

Similar preference for biologically complex habitats has also been found in other places such as the Firth of Clyde for haddock. The abundance of whiting and cod is directly related with the diversity of the seabed.

If we are to stop this destructive vandalism of seabed dredging we need to take action. Greenpeace is showing the lead on the Dogger Bank.

If George Eustice, former Ukip candidate and now Tory Minister of State for Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and his cronies in the British fishing industry are going to lock themselves in soundproof glass houses away from logical argument and protest, some of us will need to start throwing stones.

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