How to reduce bottom trawling in marine protected areas is one of the issues at stake at the United Nations Ocean Conference, held in Nice from 9 to 13 June (see EUROPE 13656/8).
On Wednesday 11 June, the NGOs Sciaena and Seas At Risk welcomed Portugal’s announcements concerning the extension of marine protected areas. By the end of the year, the Gorringe seamount (southwest of Cape St. Vincent) will have its protection status reinforced, extending the protected area as a whole and designating part of it as a fully protected area. In Nice, Portugal’s minister for the environment, Maria da Graça Carvalho, reaffirmed Portugal’s commitment to protecting around 30% of its national maritime area by 2030.
Above all, the NGOs are calling on EU countries to ban bottom trawling in marine protected area.
European Commissioner for Fisheries and for Oceans Costas Kadis said in Nice: “We need to expand the network of marine protected areas and manage them effectively”. This means developing a specific management plan for each area in order to determine what economic activities are possible there, he noted. “If the aim is to protect the seabed, then trawling should absolutely not be allowed in this area. If we’re looking to protect pelagic species or birds, it’s the scientists who will guide us”, he said. Decisions on these zones will be guided by scientific data, according to Costas Kadis.
The Spanish fisheries minister, Luis Planas, criticised the “demonisation of a fishing practice” such as bottom trawling. In his view, we need to “analyse where and under what conditions” this fishing takes place. “This is not something that, in my opinion, constitutes an attack on the marine environment”, he said.
For Seas At Risk, it is “unacceptable that the Spanish fisheries minister defended bottom trawling at a conference on ocean protection. Industrial trawlers leave virtually no life after scraping the seabed”.
The EU’s General Court has rejected Spain’s appeals against the ban on bottom trawling in protected fishing areas (see EUROPE 13657/23). The European Bottom Fisheries Alliance (EBFA) has expressed its disappointment at the judgment.
France, for its part, has announced a limit on bottom trawling in 4% of its waters. French President Emmanuel Macron said on Wednesday that to ban such practices, “we need to move on to stronger protections”. Before the UN oceans summit, “France’s level of strong protection was at 4%; afterwards, it will go up to 14%”, the French leader pledged.
MEP Isabelle Le Callennec (EPP, French) advocated the management of marine protected areas “on a case-by-case basis and with scientific advice”, and “not the exclusion of trawling according to principle and ideology”. (Original version in French by Lionel Changeur)