Photo by Christian Paul Stobbe
Greenpeace UK has placed boulders weighing up to two tonnes on the seabed in the Southern North Sea Marine Protected Area. The campaign group says the barrier has effectively closed 116 km² of the site to bottom trawling.
The Marine Management Organisation (MMO) has since published nine reported boulder positions so that fishing vessels and other sea users can navigate safely. The MMO stresses that the coordinates were relayed by Greenpeace to HM Coastguard and that it has not independently verified all of them.
Why this site
The Southern North Sea MPA runs along England’s east coast. It was designated for harbour porpoise and supports nearly 20% of the UK North Sea population. Fishing is unrestricted across most of the site.
Greenpeace’s analysis of Global Fishing Watch data found at least 37,200 hours of bottom-towed fishing there in 2025, more than any other UK offshore MPA. Across all UK offshore MPAs, it estimates that towed gear covered a cumulative 55,600 km² of seabed. That figure counts every pass, so it measures how much trawling took place, not how much seabed was affected. Greenpeace says the methodology is available on request; we have not seen it.
The action was timed to coincide with the first episode of Blue Planet III. Greenpeace’s ship, the Arctic Sunrise, will patrol the area in the coming days. Benedict Cumberbatch, Simon Pegg and several MPs signed boulders.
Pressure on the bottom trawling decision
The protest targets the slow pace of government action on bottom trawling in offshore MPAs. According to Greenpeace, the Stage 3 consultation on restricting bottom trawling in parts of 42 further MPAs closed more than a year ago, with no decision yet published. The Southern North Sea is due to be included in a Stage 4 consultation, but no date has been set.
“With our ship and a movement behind us, we’re doing what the government isn’t: protecting our seas,” said Will McCallum, co-executive director of Greenpeace UK. He added: “Now we’re setting a bold challenge to ministers: Ban destructive fishing across all our protected waters at home, and lead the charge for a network of global ocean sanctuaries right across the Atlantic.”
Former climate minister Kerry McCarthy MP, who signed one of the boulders, said: “Industrialised fishing is having a hugely destructive impact on our marine environment, yet less than 1% of our seas are protected from it.”
A contested tactic
Greenpeace has previously placed boulders at Dogger Bank and in the Offshore Brighton Marine Conservation Zone. Those actions drew strong objections from fishing organisations. After the Brighton deployment, the NFFO wrote to party leaders arguing that the boulders breached rules on dumping material at sea and potentially endangered fishermen’s lives.
No industry response to this latest action had been published at the time of writing. The MMO’s notice asks mariners to take account of the reported positions when planning and conducting their activities.