A powerful new documentary film, Ocean with David Attenborough, has just been released (June 7th) to coincide with Sir David Attenborough’s 99th birthday. The film, made by Disney, aims to focus public attention on the health of the ocean and address a long-standing imbalance that exists between land and sea conservation.
But one of the most harrowing (literally) sequences of the film is around bottom trawling, with submarine cameras skilfully mounted to the fishing nets, recording the ensuing chaos and destruction as they are dragged across the ocean floor. It’s one of those moments that live long in the memory but which in the future, we may look back and say was a tipping-point that forced change.
The ongoing carnage resulting from bottom trawling has for too long been out of sight and therefore out of mind, and this film sequence has been praised for revealing its horrific impact. And yet, despite its brutality, the fishing system is allowed in almost all of the UK’s most highly protected marine areas. In Scotland, 92% of inshore marine protected areas still permit bottom trawling and dredging, even in fragile coastal habitats such as seagrass meadows and reef systems.
Don MacNeish, founder of COAST, gave a graphic and insightful account of its impact.
The first time I dived over an area hit by a scallop dredger, it was devastating, like swimming from the Garden of Eden into a nuclear wasteland. Everything smashed, life wiped out. From shore, the Arran community watched helplessly as boats went back and forth, scraping closer every time, destroying generations of sea life for a few scallops.They were taking the future out of the sea, leaving us only wreckage. How could this be allowed? People don’t realise how rich, how abundant our waters once were or how much we’ve already lost.
The film will create even more awareness about the destructive nature of bottom-dredging, but there is already a significant level of global opposition to the practice. 8 out of 10 people in the UK want it banned, and in the EU, a quarter of a million people have signed a petition called for it to end. Around 60% of Europe’s Marine Protected Areas are subjected to bottom-trawling, in many cases more intensively than in less protected adjacent areas. And (even worse) the system attracts $1.3 billion in EU government subsidies every year. So taxpayers are underwriting this environmental vandalism.
The timing of the documentary could not be better. At the end of June, the third UN Ocean Conference will take place and this is likely to be an issue that is high on the agenda.
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