How to stop trawling from trashing the North Sea

Recently Greenpeace dropped a boatload of granite boulders on to Dogger Bank, a permanent threat to any boat that attempts to drag a trawl net across the sandy sea-bottom. One of the biggest boulders had my name painted on it, because Greenpeace asked and I said yes. And in saying yes, I crossed a line that I have never crossed before in 40 years of writing about the environment. I joined the activists, in I hope a measured way, because it’s so very important to give the North Sea a chance to revive itself.

Dogger Bank is the ecological heart of the North Sea and it played a large part in the growth of civilisation in northern Europe. It is also the perfect example of the failure of the European Union to obey its own environmental laws; and, unless drastic action is taken and amendments are made to the Fisheries Bill, it will also become a symbol of Brexit as a lost opportunity.

The Dogger was home to humans before sea levels rose, when the land bridge connected Britain to the continent. As every schoolchild used to know, a few hundred years ago it had huge oyster and mussel beds, and of course was a nursery and a breeding ground for fish. The North Sea fishery, made rich by the Dogger, was the engine which created the European banking sector, and settling disputes over its fishery formed the basis of international law that’s still in use.

Dogger Bank today hosts a wide variety of marine life ranging from soft corals to sharks and rays; it is a breeding ground for whiting cod and sand eels, and a foraging area for seabirds and marine mammals such as seals, harbour porpoises, white-beaked dolphins and minke whales.