MPs urged to close loopholes on marine mammal disturbance

A cross-party group of MPs and peers met at Portcullis House on Tuesday 27 January for a parliamentary roundtable hosted by Wildlife and Countryside Link’s Marine Mammals Working Group, chaired by ORCA’s Lucy Babey.

The message was simple: UK laws on marine mammal disturbance are still incoherent and piecemeal - and that leaves avoidable gaps in protection for animals that share the same waters. TV naturalist Gillian Burke spoke about the real-world impacts of disturbance, from stress and disrupted feeding to injuries and fatal “stampede” events at haul-out sites.

The roundtable highlighted a stark anomaly: a walrus is protected from disturbance under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, but our two resident seal species, grey seal and harbour seal, are not despite being regularly harassed at busy coastlines. It also reiterated that protections for cetaceans vary in confusing ways, with the harbour porpoise not covered by the disturbance offence in England and Wales.

This follows the 2023 Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee report which concluded the legal framework is “incoherent” and backed adding seals to Schedule 5 of the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. But in December 2025, the Government said it would not implement the amendments proposed in the Joint Nature Conservation Committee advice following the QQR7 process.

ORCA is urging MPs to press the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to close these gaps so seals, whales, dolphins and porpoises all get equal legal protection in UK waters.