Open Letter to Rishi Sunak
Photo Credit: Los Angeles, June 2012. Photo by Lou Dematteis/Spectral Q.
https://fabiusmaximus.com/2013/12/13/oceans-fish-pollution-60148/
The Prime Minister
The Rt Hon Rishi Sunak
10 Downing St
SW1A 2AA
Dear Prime Minister,
As a resident of UK, I am really concerned about our waters and how they are protected, especially Oceans. I had written to your colleague and my MP at Basingstoke, Maria Miller, earlier in Oct 2022 through Greenpeace UK campaign on Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) and Industrial fishing practices like bottom trawling that is causing severe damage to ocean ecosystems and habitat destruction. I have learnt from her that UK is world leader in protecting oceans with 372 MPAs covering 38% of UK waters. However, the progress towards the ambitious goal of protecting 30% ocean biodiversity by 2030 is alarmingly slow and as per Dec 2022 Greenpeace report, key findings below depicts the true state of our MPAs
- More than 90% of MPAs don’t have meaningful site-wide regulation on the most destructive fishing activity.
- Just two MPAs in the entire network are fully protected from all fishing activity (a ‘no-take zone’) across their whole site.
- Just five of the UK’s 76 offshore MPAs are protected against bottom towed gear – a type of fishing gear that can damage the seabed, devastate marine life, and release the seabed’s stored carbon. Only two of these have site-wide protection.
- Only 8% of UK MPAs – an area of ocean the size of less than 0.1% of the UK's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) – are fully closed to all bottom and pelagic towed fishing gear and can sustain ecosystem recovery. No offshore MPAs are fully closed to all towed gear.
Post Brexit missed opportunity by acting slow?
Fisheries Act 2020 was also mentioned by my MP on her email reply on how it will ensure and issue licences based on which areas fishing is authorised, how many hours of fishing and in what quantities, description of species and permitted fishing method etc., While this is big win after Brexit to take back control of UK water up to 200 nautical miles, the enforcement of this act to exclude all kinds of destructive industrial fishing methods has been very slow in last 2 years as per this Guardian report. While the progress is slow on one side, on the other side, UK Government allowed Over 1000 EU and UK finishing vessels in 2022 which could potentially continue bottom trawling in UK MPAs and Hugo Tagholm, executive director of Oceana UK, said:
“Shockingly, in the wake of the UN biodiversity conference commitments to protect 30% of land and sea, the UK Government has just issued over 1,500 fishing licenses for EU vessels for 2023, which would permit them to bottom trawl in most offshore UK marine protected areas.”
This report from Guardian mentions post Brexit, UK granted licences to 1000s of vessels to fish in all but 2 offshore MPAs. UK has all powers post Brexit to ban bottom trawling and other destructive fishing practices in MPAs as per Fisheries Act 2020, however regulations in 2022 as per Greenpeace report was only enforced in 4 out 76 offshore MPAs including large Dogger Bank MPA. Even out of these 4 only 2 MPAs have site wide bottom trawling ban and other 2 have partial protection that can still allow supertrawlers and fly-shooters to fish. Greenpeace argues that this feature-based approach for example seabed alone rather than whole-site approach to management may ban bottom trawling but cannot prohibit other destructive fishing methods like supertrawlers or pelagic midwater fishing. These 4 constitutes 10% of offshore (beyond 12 nautical miles) MPAs which means remaining 90% MPAs are unprotected. While it is welcome step to review another 13 MPAs, the process seems to be too slow and it took 2 years post Brexit to enforce law on 4 MPAs that is also not fully with all types of destructive fishing practices. As per the fishing vessel tracking data analysis from Global Fishing Watch (GFW) and Oceana, in 2021
“1604 vessels including industrial boats were found with bottom trawling gear in 58 out of 64 offshore “benthic” MPAs, dragging everything from ocean seabed spending 31,854 hours and a total of 132,627 fishing hours”.
In another case study at one South West Deeps (East) MPA as published in Greenpeace report,
“fishing vessels spent an estimated 18,928 hours – about 788 days – fishing in this MPA over just 18 months (January 2021-July 2022). Despite the seabed supposedly being protected, large bottom trawlers spent 3,370 hours fishing in the MPA in the same period (January 2021-July 2022), dragging heavy fishing gear across the ocean floor in the process” further to that “vessels with bottom towed gear spent an estimated 47,833 hours fishing in UK offshore MPAs.”
When I looked at response from my MP, Fisheries Act 2020 post Brexit has power to protect MPAs in all aspects but failed to deliver promise with very slow progress; what areas fishing is authorized (all but 2 MPAs allowed for fishing), how many hours of fishing (Relentless), what quantities (unsustainable, unhealthy and near extinction) and what fishing methods (most destructive). With only 7 years left for 30x30 commitment, climate activists and scientists believe that it is very ambitious to meet that target. I wouldn’t go into the details of Brexit promises made to small scale fishermen who are restricted to ports and yet industrialised fishing practices are allowed with ineffective regulations including MPAs and still allowing EU vessels within 6-12 nautical miles.
Lack of effective monitoring and management of MPA?
As Greenpeace quoted in their 2022 report “Monitoring of MPAs is an undervalued and under-resourced component of marine conservation, and it is difficult to get accurate assessments of the quality of protection and degree of restoration being provided by MPAs. Without sufficient monitoring, the government cannot reliably assess progress towards conservation targets and simply cannot claim to be a world-leader in ocean protection” I couldn’t agree any less here with Greenpeace as it is always for these NGOs to patrol the seas, drop boulders in seas to restrict bottom trawling, confront big vessels sometimes risking their lives etc., rather than government taking measures and using technology to monitor. When I recollect my MP’s response, I wondered how we could call ourselves as world leader if we don’t even have effective and real-time monitoring system for vessel movement, quantity of fishing captured, habitat destruction mapping etc.,
As Marine Conservative Society Charity organisation in UK puts it
“As of early 2022, there is still no comprehensive national onboard satellite monitoring of vessel movement (referred to as ‘inshore Vessel Monitoring System’). There has been plans for this since 2010. It would allow for understanding of wider fishing activity, could provide virtual ‘geofences’ around MPAs that would automatically send messages to vessels that they are approaching MPA boundaries, and restricted areas. So it could be used as a data surveillance tool for an – as yet – invisible part of our fleet. And as 80% of the commercial fishing industry, it is necessary to ‘see’ these vessels in order for our MPAs to be considered ‘well-managed’.”
In fact, Marine Conservative Society tried to build a visualization tool themselves using open-source technology to provide map of fisheries managements, seabed habitat protected, regulations on bottom trawling etc., with different filter criteria as a MPA Reality Check, ideally that must have come from government.
Why we should act fast ?
With the carbon clock ticking with a remaining carbon budget of 42.2 Gt / year left to keep us below 1.5 degree warming as per IPCC report, we have only time till 2030. We have seen what 1.1 degree warming did to UK in 2022, I must remind you in case if you are too much occupied with political crisis with 3 Prime Minister changes in your party, 3 back-to-back storms in Feb 2022 causing major damage and power outage to 4 million people, hottest summer ever recorded with 41 degrees heat waves followed by wild fires and drought, and floods immediately after that with eroded & dry soil couldn’t absorb water leaving no option for water companies to release untreated sewage water into 50 beaches in UK with blue alerts flagged not to go in water and finally the arctic blast causing trouble for more than a week to end 2022 with chilling winter.
With Met office in UK warning some of these events to return in 2023, we must listen to scientific advise which estimates bottom trawling can pump out 1 Gt / year of carbon almost equivalent to aviation industry and especially in UK as per Marine Conservative Society,
“Much of the carbon stored in the UK’s seafloor (93%) is found in the muddy and sandy sediments in offshore waters where there are no trawling restrictions. As the seabed is trawled, carbon stored there is released into the water, where it can make its way into the atmosphere and could ultimately contribute to climate change.”
Apart from releasing carbon due to industrialized fishing practices, the ocean habitats like kelp forest, seagrass meadows, coral reef, coastal wetlands, marshes which are critical for biodiversity and act as carbon sequesters are at risk in MPAs areas as well.
I sincerely request that we must highly or fully protect our oceans at least by 30% by 2030 as per the goals set out and completely ban bottom trawling and other destructive fishing practices at protected waters with site-wide approach as Greenpeace suggests, implement new technology for effective monitoring in real-time and managing MPAs, help encourage sustainable fishing for the benefit of small business, improve sewage management system for effective flood management and penalise water companies who pollute our oceans!
Yours Faithfully
Kamesh Telikicherla
Basingstoke, UK
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