Fisheries: Marine Protected Areas

(asked on 25th June 2020) - View Source

Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment his Department has made of the implications for his policy on marine conservation of the Lloyd’s List Maritime Intelligence tracking data on the time spent fishing in UK Marine Protected Area waters by foreign owned vessels over 100 metres.


Answered by
Rebecca Pow Portrait
Rebecca Pow
Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
This question was answered on 30th June 2020

Marine conservation is a devolved matter and the information provided therefore relates to England only.

The Marine Management Organisation monitors fishing activity with dedicated enforcement and surveillance work to protect fisheries, including offshore patrol vessels for at-sea surveillance. It tracks the movement of all fishing vessels 24 hours a day through satellite technology, deploys aerial surveillance, and coordinates intelligence from third-party sources – detecting where and when illegal fishing is suspected. Not all fishing activities within Marine Protected Areas will require management; only those activities likely to damage the designated features, such as trawling on the seabed.

At the end of the Transition Period, we will have the right to decide who fishes in our waters and on what terms. Any decisions about giving access to fish for vessels from the European Union, or any other coastal states, will be a matter for the UK to decide.

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