Greenpeace drops boulders to deter North Sea trawlers — SkimNews
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- Greenpeace UK activists aboard the Arctic Sunrise dropped giant stones into the North Sea to form an underwater barrier around the Southern North Sea marine protected area, which the campaign group calls the UK's most bottom-trawled MPA.
- Southern North Sea MPA — the boulder barrier effectively closed 116 sq km (about 45 sq miles) of it to bottom trawling, and the activists declared the zone an "ocean park" in the spirit of Britain's national parks.
- Arctic Sunrise will patrol the area over the coming days to deter other kinds of industrial fishing, following Greenpeace UK's June warning that it would take direct action if the government did not act soon.
- Harbour porpoises are the reason the Southern North Sea MPA exists, with the area supporting nearly 20% of the UK North Sea population, yet most of the protected waters carry no restrictions on fishing at all.
- Bottom trawlers and dredgers tore through a cumulative 55,600 sq km of MPA seabeds in 2025 — 58 times the size of Dartmoor National Park — while bottom trawlers alone logged more than 37,200 fishing hours inside the protected zone, which Greenpeace compared to "a bulldozer tearing through a treasured national park".
- Kerry McCarthy, the Labour MP and former climate minister, added her name to one of the boulders, saying less than 1% of UK seas are protected from industrialised fishing and calling for a bottom-trawling ban and properly protected ocean sanctuaries in UK waters and across the Atlantic.
- Blue Planet III, the latest BBC wildlife documentary narrated by David Attenborough, had its nationwide premiere the same day as the boulder drop.
Why it matters: Bottom trawlers are shut out of 116 sq km of the UK's most bottom-trawled marine protected area, with the Arctic Sunrise now patrolling it and the government yet to comment. The action also carries an unusually direct political rebuke: Labour MP Kerry McCarthy signed a boulder, noting less than 1% of UK seas are protected from industrial fishing.
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