Protect Our Catch

We’re fighting for a healthy European ocean — so that our fisheries, communities, and marine life can thrive.

We say that over 12% of EU waters are protected — but are they really? Europe’s so-called protected waters are the most bottom-trawled in the world, threatening the sustainability of Europe’s fisheries and the families and communities of the small-scale fishers who make up the overwhelming majority of the EU fishing fleet. Destructive large-scale fishing in marine protected areas (MPAs) depletes their catch and concentrates the economic benefits in fewer and fewer hands.

What

We must secure a ban on bottom trawling in EU marine protected areas to promote sustainable fisheries for future generations, support local communities, and make real progress in protecting our ocean.

Photo: Greenpeace

Why

Bottom trawling threatens local jobs, communities, and economies by competing with small-scale, low-impact fishers. The destructive practice poses irreversible damage to marine life, wiping out vital ecosystems that support commercial fish populations and sustain livelihoods.

Europe’s marine protected areas must be truly protected in order to do their job and maximise their benefits — providing meaningful ecosystem protection, mitigating climate change and the effects of extreme weather, and supporting livelihoods.

Hear directly from the small-scale fishers affected by bottom trawling

Bally Philip · Inverness, Scotland

Isaac Moya · Catalunya, España

Macarena Molina Hernández · Andalusia, España

Renato Galeotti · Vada, Italia

Key Issues

Economy

Banning bottom trawling would be an investment in the long-term sustainability of EU fisheries and thriving coastal communities, with cascading socioeconomic benefits across commercial fishing, tourism, and diverse ecosystem services.

Food security

Enhancing the protection and management of MPAs will support traditional fishers over the industrial-scale exploitation of marine resources — much of which is used for fishmeal and exports — to promote sustainable fisheries for human consumption.

Climate & biodiversity

Vulnerable species like dolphins, turtles, corals, juvenile fish, sharks, and rays are indiscriminately swept up as bycatch by bottom trawls, which devastate marine ecosystems, damage the seabed, and accelerate the climate crisis.

Jobs

If bottom trawling continues in Europe's MPAs, marine ecosystems and resources will not have a chance to recover, threatening livelihoods across the fishing sector and discouraging new workers from entering the industry.

On the Lineㅤㅤ

Paolo Fanciulli

Small-scale fisher and founder of the museum “La Casa dei Pesci” (The House of Fish)

Talamone, Italia 🇮🇹

“I have been actively fighting industrial trawling since 1986. To protect the sea, I have placed hundreds of concrete seafloor bollards (thus saving the Posidonia meadows) and marble blocks, sculpted by international artists, which have become an underwater museum called 'La casa dei pesci' (The House of Fish). I firmly believe that the sea can also be saved at the table by promoting and purchasing the fruits of artisanal fishing, a sustainable and non-destructive activity.”

Isaac Moya

Fisherman and Co-Founder of Sustainable Fisheries Collective Empesca’t

Catalunya, España 🇪🇸

“As small-scale fishers, we rely on traditional, low-impact methods that respect the ocean and our culture. However, industrial and bottom trawling in marine protected areas threaten our future. To ensure the continuity of our profession, it is essential to protect and promote artisanal fishing.”

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Renato Galeotti

President, Associazione Casette dei Pescatori

Vada, Italia 🇮🇹

“Small-scale fishers are part of the sea, its history and can be part of its future. The sea is not just a container of fish products to be sold on the market, and fishing boats must not become factories. Sometimes, the best way to move forward with greater awareness is to step sideways — just as the crab teaches us.”

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Federico Gelmi

Low-impact fisher

Pantelleria, Italia 🇮🇹

“Bottom trawling in MPAs is incompatible with sustainable fishing. The science is clear and the fishing tells the same story, we need to protect our ocean if we are to continue fishing.”

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Alisdair (Bally) Philip

Commercial Creel Fisherman and National Coordinator of the Scottish Creel Fishermen’s Federation

Inverness, Scotland 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

“It's a clear contradiction that some of our most destructive fishing techniques are allowed to continue in supposedly protected areas. Many people question how it is even possible that trawling and dredging are allowed to take place in MPAs at all. It's simply an artifact of the 'feature based designation' that allows this to happen. Protecting the whole area from unsustainable activity would be ecosystems based management, only protecting a feature is not only misleading, it’s the trick that allows destructive activities to continue. This is how they take the P out of MPA's!”

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Tehei Matahiarii

Small-scale fisher

Tahiti, Polynésie 🇵🇫

“If I have one message for decision-makers, it’s this: limit industrial fishing like drifting FADs or the factory ships that come near our waters, because if we keep going like this, one day there may be no fish left — and nothing left for us to catch. I believe that if all fishermen stood together, we could make things change.”

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André Dias

Small-scale fisher

Algarve, Portugal 🇵🇹

“No farmer uproots a tree to harvest fruit, but at sea that's what bottom trawling does.”

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Allies in Action

Today, France is responding to the climate, social and environmental emergency with inaction and deception. This must and can change: we have no choice, as all scientists say, but to stop destroying the ocean and to finally protect it. The future of the ocean, the climate, and humanity, lies in the balance. President Macron must rise to the challenge and respond to the challenges we face by creating genuine marine protected areas, free from industrial infrastructure and activities such as trawling, by excluding mega-trawlers from our territorial waters, in order to protect ecosystems and coastal fishers, and by advocating for a treaty and legislation on the non-proliferation of fossil fuels.”

Claire Nouvian

Founder & General Director, BLOOM

Paris, France 🇫🇷

Bottom trawling is a damaging and indiscriminate fishing method which ploughs up precious habitats, decimates biodiversity and depletes the ocean’s ability to sequester carbon. Yet this highly destructive type of fishing is still allowed in the majority of marine protected areas. We must ensure that bottom trawling is excluded from all marine protected areas without exception.”

Clare Brook

CEO, Blue Marine Foundation

London, UK 🇬🇧

As political momentum is growing ahead of the UN Ocean Conference in June, EU leaders can’t continue to ignore the public outcry about the destruction of protected areas by bottom trawling, as hundreds of thousands of EU citizens want meaningful marine protection. We urge the European Commission to particularly recognise in its future Ocean Pact how MPAs help protect fishers’ livelihoods and support coastal communities, including to counter the impacts of climate change on people.”

Nicolas Fournier

Campaign Director, Oceana in Europe

Brussel, België 🇧🇪

At a time when the EU is laser focused on competitiveness, it’s vital that MPAs are recognised as key to building a sustainable blue economy that promotes both a healthy ocean and a healthy economy. Not only do MPAs help recover fish stocks and support sustainable fishing jobs – they also benefit the EU economy with projections showing that a ban on bottom trawling in them would create a cumulative profit of more than €8 billion over 20 years. If Commissioner Kadis is serious about creating an EU Ocean Pact that delivers for people and the planet alike then it’s high time the taboo around banning bottom trawling is cast aside.”

Tatiana Nuño

Senior Marine Policy Officer, Seas At Risk

Brussel, België 🇧🇪

Most European 'Marine Protected Areas' are just lines on a map, paper parks which do nothing to stop the ongoing destruction of vital habitats. The laws are clear, and the science is unequivocal. Bottom trawling is incompatible with marine protected areas, and we urgently need action to ban it. 79% of the EU’s coastal seabed is physically disturbed, primarily because of this trawling, with a quarter of the EU’s coastal area likely having lost its natural seabed habitats. I call on our leaders to stand up for wildlife, people and our ocean now.”