‘A national scandal’: trawlers scour seabeds of supposedly protected UK waters

Massive pelagic trawlers prowl some of the UK’s most sensitive marine ecosystems, leading to perilous degrees of overfishing. Last month, the supermarket chain Waitrose suspended sales of mackerel after warnings that it was at risk of population collapse Photograph: Nature Picture Library/Alamy

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”.