Sustainable Seas — Protect the Spawning Grounds
A Sustainable Planet awareness cause — with local project hooks. Managing fisheries is national policy, so our role is awareness, advocacy, citizen science and championing a community-led local effort — not running a fishery. But it sits squarely in our environmental mission, and Moray sits on a coast with plenty to gain.
The issue: many of our “protected” seas are protected only on paper. Bottom trawling — dragging heavy gear across the seabed — is still legal in roughly 90% of the UK's 377 Marine Protected Areas; trawlers spent an estimated 20,000 hours inside MPAs in 2024, and over 1.3 million tonnes of fish have been caught inside them since 2020. In October 2025 the government declined a full ban. Mackerel has been flagged at risk of collapse, and tiny sandeels — the food of seabirds, dolphins and whitefish — have been over-fished (Scotland closed its waters to sandeel fishing in 2024 for exactly that reason).
Dead fish thrown back — the discard scandal (much in the news lately). Perfectly good fish are dumped overboard, dead, because they're the wrong size, the wrong species or over-quota. The UK's “discard ban” (the Landing Obligation) was meant to stop this, but on the government's own admission it has not changed fishing practices — good fish are still killed for nothing while stocks collapse. The proven fix is real enforcement with on-board cameras (remote electronic monitoring), plus more selective gear so the wrong catch is avoided in the first place.
The problem: fish can't breed if their nurseries are dragged up before they spawn, and “protection” that still permits trawling doesn't protect. The pressure is industrial while the damage lands on nature and on small local inshore fishers. The fixes are known and proven — what's missing is the will.
What we're calling for: real protection, not paper parks (restrict bottom trawling in Marine Protected Areas so the label means something); protect and expand spawning and nursery closures so stocks can refill; keep and extend sandeel protection to safeguard the food web; and back low-impact local fishing over industrial supertrawlers; and end the dead-fish discards by actually enforcing the discard ban with on-board cameras (remote electronic monitoring).
An out-of-the-box idea that genuinely works — light the nets, not the ocean. You can't colour-code open water or herd wild fish by colour, but fish do respond to light: fitting coloured LED lights to fishing gear has cut bycatch by around 63% overall — about 95% of sharks, skates and rays, 85% of seabirds and 40% of turtles — while keeping the target catch and hauling faster. So the safe-versus-danger signal goes on the gear: the animals we want to spare see the net and steer clear. A real project for us: trial LED-lit gear with Moray Firth inshore fishers and measure the drop in dolphin, porpoise and seabird bycatch.
A proven Scottish model — community-led no-take zones. Off Arran, a local charity campaigned for a small No-Take Zone at Lamlash Bay; today it has roughly four times the lobsters and scallops of nearby waters, and a recovering seabed. That's a template a community charity like ours can champion for a stretch of the Moray coast.
More ideas: dynamic, seasonal closures that follow the fish as they spawn; restoring seagrass, maerl, kelp and native-oyster nurseries (which also store carbon); and a marine layer for our EnviroWatch tool so people can log ghost gear, suspected illegal trawling, strandings and notable sightings.
Honest caveats: policy is national — we influence and enable, we don't decide. Small inshore fishers are partners, not villains — this cause is built with them, not against them. The LED-gear evidence is strong but must be proven in a local trial before we quote the numbers. And no-take zones take years and real community buy-in (Lamlash took 13 years) — worth it, but be realistic.
Local angle: our own Moray Firth is a bottlenose-dolphin stronghold (Chanonry Point), rich in seabirds and inshore fisheries — so bycatch reduction, sandeel protection and habitat restoration all have visible local meaning.
Next step: adopt it as a standing cause — publish a clear, well-sourced explainer, and pick one first move: scope an LED-gear bycatch trial with a local inshore fisher, or open conversations on a community no-take / spawning stretch on the Moray coast. Members vote on whether to proceed.
Sources: ~90% of the UK's 377 MPAs still open to bottom trawling; ~20,000 trawler-hours in MPAs in 2024; >1.3m tonnes caught in MPAs since 2020; UK government declined a full trawling ban, Oct 2025 (Oceana UK / reporting). LED-illuminated nets ~63% total bycatch reduction (95% sharks/skates/rays, 85% seabird, 40% turtle), catch value maintained (Current Biology / NOAA Fisheries). Lamlash Bay No-Take Zone, community group COAST, ~4x lobster & scallop abundance (University of York). Sandeel (Prohibition of Fishing) (Scotland) Order 2024. Figures to be re-verified before publishing. UK Landing Obligation (“discard ban”) in force but, per Defra, not effective in changing practices; 2025 discards-reform consultation.