Greenpeace activists have dropped boulders within the North Sea to snag the dragnets of commercial trawlers fishing in a marine protected space.
Activists onboard the Greenpeace ship Arctic Dawn dropped the large stones to type an underwater barrier across the Southern North Sea marine protected space (MPA) – the UK’s most bottom-trawled MPA.
The Southern North Sea is an space of significance for harbour porpoises, supporting almost 20% of the UK North Sea inhabitants. However regardless of its MPA standing, there aren’t any restrictions on fishing in most of it. Backside trawlers, dredgers and different industrial fishing vessels scour it every day.
Backside trawlers logged greater than 37,200 fishing hours within the protected zone in 2025, an act akin to “a bulldozer tearing by way of a treasured nationwide park”, Greenpeace UK mentioned.
“Hulking nice ships prowl the ocean day after day, stripping it of fish and killing valuable wildlife like porpoises, sharks and sea birds,” mentioned Will McCallum, the marketing campaign organisation’s co-executive director. “With our ship and a motion behind us, we’re doing what the federal government isn’t: defending our seas.”
The “boulder barrier” had successfully closed 116 sq km (about 45 sq miles) of the Southern North Sea MPA to backside trawling, Greenpeace UK mentioned. Over the approaching days, the Arctic Dawn will patrol the world to discourage every other sorts of commercial fishing. The activists have declared the zone an “ocean park”, within the spirit of Britain’s nationwide parks.
The Southern North Sea MPA lies alongside the east coast of England, from north of Dogger Financial institution to the strait of Dover within the south. It’s meant to guard porpoise populations, partly by guaranteeing the “availability of prey is maintained”. Greenpeace UK’s activists say intensive fishing within the space contradicts this goal.
“We introduced in June that if the federal government didn’t act quickly, Greenpeace UK would take direct motion,” McCallum mentioned.
The motion coincided with the nationwide premiere of Blue Planet III, the newest BBC wildlife documentary narrated by David Attenborough to concentrate on the oceans and the human-made threats they face. In 2025 backside trawlers and dredgers tore by way of a cumulative 55,600 sq km of MPA seabeds, an space 58 occasions the scale of Dartmoor nationwide park, in accordance with a Greenpeace evaluation.
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Quite a lot of notable figures added their names to boulders tipped from the Arctic Dawn into the North Sea. Amongst them was the Labour MP Kerry McCarthy, a former local weather minister and a member of the all-party parliamentary group for the ocean, who mentioned: “Industrialised fishing is having a vastly harmful impression on our marine setting, but lower than 1% of our seas are protected against it.
“[Fishing boats] can legally tear by way of supposedly protected areas of the ocean, wreaking havoc upon the seabed, valuable habitats and the ocean life that lives there. Progress is simply too gradual and nature can’t wait, which is why I’ve added my identify to one among Greenpeace UK’s boulders. We’d like a ban on backside trawling and correctly protected ocean sanctuaries, each right here in UK waters and proper throughout the Atlantic Ocean.”
The federal government has been contacted for remark.