UK’s largest sandbank given protection from bottom trawling

A megrim fish on rippled sand at Dogger Bank in the North Sea. Data showed bottom trawling had tripled in occurence since Brexit. Photograph: JNCC/PA

The UK’s largest sandbank has been protected from bottom trawling, an environmentally destructive fishing technique.

Activists have been calling on the government for years to stop bottom trawling at Dogger Bank, an important site off the east coast of England for species including sand eels, hermit crabs, flatfish and starfish.