Fishing in Tandem with Nature: Our work so far

• See an infographic with an overview of our support towards healthy seas including our work in fishing in tandem with nature.

The sea is intrinsically linked to much of our environment work at Esmée Fairbairn Foundation, and the impact of our support towards healthy seas extends beyond the shoreline. It provides nutrient and protein rich food, linking to our nature friendly farming priority and work towards food systems that are positive for nature and communities. The sea is also an end point for pollution from land-based farming and sewage outflow, and work in our freshwater priority explores opportunities to support collaborative partnerships to reduce this. Oceans provide jobs and employment for coastal communities whilst buffering them from the impacts of climate change, closely linking to our work in Creative, Confident Communities. There are also connections to our justice priorities in A Fairer Future to support a more equitable and just industry.

Making the case for change to reduce overfishing

The launch of Esmée’s 2020-2027 strategy coincided with the departure of the UK from the EU. Brexit and the new underpinning Fisheries Act 2020 held a promise to take back control of UK waters and increase the catches of fishers. Almost five years on and UK seas are facing unprecedented pressure from ever increasing and often competing interests, with over a third of fish stocks around Britain being overfished. Overfishing, pollution, habitat loss, climate change and offshore wind development are pushing UK seas to breaking point.

Our long-standing support to organisations such as The Open Seas Trust has helped to shine a light on the perilous state of UK fisheries. Legal challenges have proven to be invaluable tools in holding government to account. Open Seas and Fish Legal’s recent legal victory which challenged the Scottish Government’s approach to licensing of scallop dredging, one of the most damaging forms of fishing, is an example of this. Open Seas’ recent campaign ‘Say no to Scampi’ has increased pressure on retailers to push for changes in their supply chain or stop sourcing from unsustainable bottom trawl fisheries for langoustines, which is causing significant harm in parts of the UK. Some of these fisheries have also been under scrutiny for social justice issues including human rights abuses on board fishing vessels.

The threats posed to people, nature and climate from overfishing are poorly understood and frequently overlooked by the public and decision makers. Oceana UK has recently published a bold new roadmap to end overfishing and restore life to UK seas which draws on conversations with small-scale fishers, academics and environmentalists from across the UK. The report highlights how fisheries interact and contribute to other social benefits and government priorities from climate action to coastal livelihoods and community wellbeing. We will continue to support work that challenges mismanagement of fisheries and develops solutions and pathways to sustainable and equitable fisheries.

© Scottish Wildlife Trust - A group of people in conversation while sitting on the beach.

Meeting the UK’s goal to protect 30% of the sea by 2030

Achieving an end to overfishing relies on removing the most destructive and indiscriminate forms of fishing from the marine environment. The UK, like many other countries, is committed to the global goal of protecting 30% of land and sea by 2030. Yet, destructive bottom-towed fishing (trawling and dredging) still takes place in over 90% of the nation’s Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).

We are committed to the sector’s call to action of 30% by 2030 and we’re supporting organisations to come together to work with Government, industry, communities and fishers for more prosperous seas. The North Sea Wildlife Trusts and North-West Wildlife Trusts formed partnerships on the back of this work and demonstrate the value of organisations working together. The North Sea Wildlife Trusts have been instrumental in protecting some of the UK’s largest MPAs. Dogger Bank MPA (an area five times the size of the Lake District) has complete protection from bottom trawling and dredging since 2022 as a result.

We are also working with organisations and partnerships working in areas of UK seas that are most at risk. For example, the Northern Ireland Marine Task Force (NITMTF), led by Ulster Wildlife Trust, is a collaboration of twelve organisations working to protect Northern Ireland’s MPA network, with the support of approximately 100,000 local people. The State of Nature Report 2023 shows that Northern Ireland is now one of the most nature-depleted countries in the world with 12% of assessed species being threatened with extinction, including marine species such as the basking shark and critically endangered flapper skate.

MPAs provide a myriad of benefits to people and nature and we are just beginning to understand their role in storing carbon and helping to mitigate climate change. In September, Yorkshire Wildlife Trust and partners published a groundbreaking report that shows marine habitats store vast amounts of carbon. The report makes the UK the first country to map and estimate the amount of carbon stored in seabed habitats in MPAs. It found the UK seabed is capable of absorbing and storing almost three times the amount of carbon than UK forests.

A recent investigation by The Open Seas Trust has highlighted the ongoing harm inside Scotland’s MPAs, helping to keep the pressure up to deliver high levels of protection. We’re also supporting Our Seas – a coalition of organisations across different sectors including environmental, fishing and businesses, as well as local communities and individuals - is campaigning for the removal of damaging bottom-towed fishing in Scotland’s coastal waters. This work is timely as the Scottish Government is in the process of consulting on new measures which, if approved, will bring crucial and potentially significant protection to a diversity of species and habitats including cold water corals, pilot whales and rare sharks such as the leafscale gulper shark.

Moving forwards, we remain committed to supporting networks and partnerships working at the local, regional and national scale including the marine environment LINKs to coordinate efforts to meet the 2030 goal.

Supporting a transition to sustainable fishing

The need to reduce the scale and impact of fisheries extends beyond the boundaries of MPAs – after all, boundaries are imaginary lines for fish and marine wildlife. We want to support projects that prove the viability of fishing gear that reduces the impact of fisheries on the marine environment and develop pathways for transitions. Fishtek Marine’s ‘disco scallop’ pilot in Yorkshire, a partnership with York University and local fishers, using LED lights attached to crab and lobster pots to attract and trap scallops – if proved, this innovative idea might provide a route to move away from one of the UK’s most destructive forms of fishing.

In the coming year, we also want to shine a light on other fisheries that have high impacts on marine life and ecosystems. The Scottish Creel Fishermen’s Federation in collaboration with The Scottish Entanglement Alliance have proven a relatively low-cost solution for creel fishers to greatly reduce mortality of cetaceans such as whales, dolphins and basking sharks caught in their fishing gear. The project is a powerful example of partnership working between fishers, scientists and government.

In 2025, we will continue to look for opportunities to support work that demonstrates the efficacy of gear adoption and advocates for policy to support transitions to fishing with a lower impact.

New technologies and gear innovation require policy frameworks and financial support to drive transitions and enable fishers to adopt more sustainable practices. We have begun to explore how financial models can be developed to assist with this process and ensure, once proved, innovation can be rolled out and accessible to all. As part of this, we want to test new approaches and have recently provided a grant to Finance Earth to adapt their global Fisheries Improvement Fund (FIF) model to the UK. The FIF hopes to develop a model that enables fishers to access gear innovation at a lower cost due to supply chain support.

With pressures on global fish stocks at an all-time high, aquaculture is increasingly important in the UK. In response to this, we commissioned a report, Factfinding and Future Prospects in UK Aquaculture, to explore what organisations working in UK aquaculture feel are the key risks and opportunities for the sector. It highlighted the risks with the growth of the salmon farming sector. Together with a coalition of 50 Scottish businesses, industry representatives, youth groups, conservation groups, community groups and charities, WildFish is calling for an urgent re-evaluation by the Scottish Government of open-net salmon farming industry, considering the growing body of evidence demonstrating that the industry causes multiple environmental, welfare and sustainability problems. We will continue to support organisations that seek to ensure the growth of aquaculture does not happen at the expense of the marine environment.

One opportunity that has grown in popularity in the UK in the last 10 years is regenerative aquaculture, which focuses on species such as shellfish (mussels, oysters and scallops) and seaweed. As well as needing no feed to grow, they improve the health and biodiversity of the ocean by filtering water, providing habitat and reducing acidity. In 2024, we made our first marine social investment to Car Y Mor, a community owned seaweed and shellfish farm in Pembrokeshire, Wales. We want to learn how models of regenerative aquaculture can support transitions to low impact and climate smart fisheries around the UK and provide blue jobs within coastal communities.

More equitable fisheries

We also want to support greater action to deliver more equitable fisheries. In 2018, Greenpeace revealed just five families on the Sunday Times Rich List hold or control more than a quarter of the United Kingdom’s fishing quota. The Fisheries Act 2020 sets out an ambition to move access to fish from fisheries that have a high impact on the environment and benefit the few to those that can demonstrate a low impact on the environment as well as strong social and economic value. But pathways to delivering this transition remain unclear.

Work that tests models on the ground with fishers, such as disco scallops, and/or develops policy frameworks to enable transitions are priorities for our support. Redistributing power and access in fisheries could ignite new opportunities for fishing communities around the coast. This contributes to our other priorities such as community driven enterprise and regeneration.

The collapse of fish stocks is also threatening coastal communities with many fishers’ livelihoods dependent on an ever-dwindling set of species. The number of fishers in the UK has been declining for decades. Small-scale fisheries are particularly affected and have experienced a decrease of 47% since 2008.

In response to this, we supported a consortium of seven organisations led by Newcastle University spanning government, fishing associations, eNGOS and academia to lead two national workshops. Taking place in in Poole and Whitby, they brought together 120 participants, including 49 fishermen. The consortium has sent a briefing to all coastal MPs in the UK capturing the co-created vision and action plan including a set of priorities to safeguard small-scale fisheries and their communities.

To address the inequalities in the current fisheries management system, it is paramount that the voices of small-scale, low impact fishers and their communities are strengthened. Building on our support to The Scottish Creel Fishermen’s Federation, we are exploring how to support more fisher-led initiatives. Recent support to Plymouth Fishing and Seafood Association is demonstrating the value of Community Interest Companies as a model to bring fishers together and drive more regional approaches to fisheries management. In future, we will explore opportunities to increase our support to fisher-led initiatives.

As part of our cross-cutting commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion, we also want to support initiatives helping to make the industry safer, more inclusive and attractive to all. The fishing sector is male-dominated and our grant to UK Women in Fisheries last year marks a first step to amplify the hidden voices of the fishing industry.

Share your thoughts

We’d appreciate hearing your thoughts. Are there additional steps we could take, or do you have any ideas or opportunities that might help us make progress on our long-term goals in this area:

• Fisheries in the UK are well and equitably managed, using low impact methods.
• Coastal communities benefit from and have an active role in managing marine resources.

Send us an email us at communications@esmeefairbairn.org.uk.

You can find out more about our recent funding towards fishing in tandem with nature. You can also read our previous blog: Healthy seas and thriving coastal communities.