Marine protected areas (MPAs) should be safe havens. They should be places where harbour porpoises can feed, seabirds can find the fish they need to survive, and damaged marine ecosystems can recover. But a new report from Oceana UK shows that, for too many of the UK’s supposedly protected seas, that promise is still not being kept.
Oceana’s new report, Trawled and Mauled, examines the extent and impacts of apparent bottom trawling in UK marine protected areas designated for seabirds and cetaceans - whales, dolphins and porpoises. Its findings are deeply troubling.
Out of 113 UK MPAs designated to protect these much-loved species, no MPAs designated for whales, dolphins or porpoises are fully protected from bottom trawling across the whole site. Only two seabird MPAs have full-site protection from this destructive activity. Together, that protected area amounts to only around the size of the Isle of Wight.
One of the most alarming examples is the Southern North Sea Special Area of Conservation, a harbour porpoise sanctuary, which Oceana found was subjected to 30,936 hours of apparent bottom trawling in 2025 alone. That is the equivalent of 1,289 days of trawling packed into a single year.
This is not meaningful protection. It is protection in name only.
Bottom trawling is often discussed because of the damage it causes to the seabed, and rightly so. Heavy metal gear and nets are dragged across the seafloor, damaging habitats and disturbing marine life. But the harm does not stop there. Oceana’s report highlights how bottom trawling can affect seabirds and cetaceans directly and indirectly, from entanglement in fishing gear to the depletion of prey species that marine wildlife depends on.
Sandeels, for example, are a crucial food source for seabirds such as kittiwakes, as well as whales including humpback and minke whales. When seabed habitats are damaged and prey populations decline, the impacts ripple through the wider marine ecosystem.
Bottom trawling can also generate underwater noise and clouds of disturbed sediment. That matters for dolphins and porpoises, which rely on sound to navigate and hunt, and for diving seabirds such as puffins and terns, which depend on sight to find food.
At ORCA, we know from our work at sea that whales, dolphins and porpoises cannot be protected in isolation from the ecosystems they depend on. Healthy habitats, abundant prey and quieter, less disturbed seas are all part of what genuine protection should mean.
The UK Government is expected to consult on managing bottom trawling in five English MPAs designated for seabirds and cetaceans. Meanwhile, the long-overdue results of the Marine Management Organisation’s Stage 3 MPA protection consultation are still awaited, following proposals last year to ban bottom trawling in 41 English offshore MPAs.
Oceana UK is now asking members of the public to send a postcard to their MP, urging them to call on the Environment Secretary to ban bottom trawling in those 41 MPAs and to protect seabird and harbour porpoise MPAs from this destructive fishing.
Marine protected areas must be more than lines on a map. If they are created to protect wildlife, then destructive fishing should not be allowed to continue inside them.
Protected must mean protected.
Tell the Government to ban bottom trawling in Marine Protected Areas by sending a postcard to your MP, urging them to protect our UK marine protected areas from bottom trawling.