A new report by the U.K. Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) shows the country is behind on several environmental metrics as pressure on its ocean environment “remains high.”
DEFRA recently released the first part of its “U.K. Marine Strategy,” which provides an updated assessment of the current progress toward Good Environmental Status (GES), which is a measure of progress and sustainability in an ecosystem. According to the report, out of 15 different categories, the U.K. is currently only meeting GES metrics in two and has not met any metrics for seven.
“We have made some progress toward achieving GES since 2012, and while there are some encouraging signs of recovery (for example commercial fisheries, grey seals, and marine litter), it is clear that more remains to be done,” DEFRA’s report states.
According to the report, species composition and size structure of demersal fish communities have deteriorated in the Greater North Sea and Celtic Sea regions.
“Their status is echoed in our assessment of food webs, where the picture across all indicators is one of overall, and occasionally widespread, decline,” the report states.
Commercial fish and shellfish are one of the 15 categories and is currently at an overarching status of “partially met” based on current assessments. The overarching target to achieve GES is having all populations of fish and shellfish that are commercially exploited be within safe biological limits.
Currently, 42 percent of marine quota fish stocks and 11 percent of non-quota shellfish stocks have achieved GES, which is an increase of 9 percent for marine species and 6 percent for shellfish stocks since 2019.
The report said multiple stocks are now at GES, including the spurdog stock in the Northeast Atlantic, the whiting stock in the North Sea and eastern English Channel, and several nephrops stocks. However, several stocks have seen worsened conditions since the last assessment in 2019, including blue whiting and herring.
Both blue whiting and herring have faced overfishing in recent years, with the International Council for the Exploration of the Seas (ICES) recommending big cuts to fishing effort that coastal states have so far failed to agree to.
Blue Marine Foundation Fisheries Policy Lead Jonny Hughes said the report is evidence the U.K. is not doing enough to ensure the region’s fisheries are sustainable.
"Continued massive overfishing, refusal to ban bottom trawling even in supposedly protected areas, and non-existent monitoring or enforcement means it's hardly surprising that the seas are in such a bad state,” Hughes said.
Hughes also criticized the U.K.’s lack of enforcement of a discard ban.
Prior to Brexit, the country was criticized in an E.U. report that claimed the U.K. was letting fishers flout discard rules. While the country has since left the E.U., the discard ban continues to apply, but Hughes said the country has continued to poorly enforce it.
“Catching too many fish, doing nothing to protect the marine environment, and not even enforcing the discard ban means this is entirely unsurprising,” he said of the DEFRA report. “At some point, making big, bold statements about all the things you are going to do and then doing none of them becomes deliberately misleading.”
