Greenpeace To Patrol UK Marine Protected Areas To Prevent Destructive Fishing

The UK branch of the environmental group Greenpeace announced on Tuesday that one of its ships will patrol UK waters off the south coast "to do what the government has so far failed to do" and save the country's marine protected areas from bottom trawling and other destructive fishing methods

LONDON (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 08th June, 2021) The UK branch of the environmental group Greenpeace announced on Tuesday that one of its ships will patrol UK waters off the south coast "to do what the government has so far failed to do" and save the country's marine protected areas from bottom trawling and other destructive fishing methods.

"Greenpeace's Operation Ocean Witness will document and expose the destructive fishing practices the UK government still permits in UK protected areas," the campaigners said in a statement released on World Ocean Day.

The conservationist group recalled that following the country's departure from the European Union, UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson pledged to ban trawlers from UK waters but "this has not happened."

"So far, the government has failed to deliver on two of its key Brexit promises: better marine protection and a better deal for the UK's fishers," the group said.

Citing a report from conservation organization Oceana, which claims that bottom trawlers spent 68,000 hours fishing in UK protected areas in 2020, Greenpeace warned that such practice is harming biodiversity, wrecking habitats and worsening the climate emergency by disturbing vast stores of carbon that would otherwise remain safely in the deep oceans.

"Our analysis of 2020 data released today has found that there was a large increase in fishing with destructive bottom towed gear in UK Marine Protected Areas despite the pandemic," Melissa Moore, head of UK policy at Oceana in Europe, was quoted as saying.

According to Greenpeace, the banning of bottom trawlers and supertrawlers from operating in all UK protected areas can be done quickly and simply by restricting licenses of these vessels to operate in UK waters.

Greenpeace's new ship Sea Beaver will operate out of Newhaven, in the south coast of England, from June until Autumn 2021.