'The most damaging thing for the sea' ... and 300 trawlers are at it in Europe

Conservationists call for action after tracking hundreds of vessels they suspect of harmful deep-sea fishing.

- Jon Ungoed-Thomas and James Tapper report

More than 300 trawlers have been tracked fishing in some of the most vulnerable marine areas in European waters, where destructive bottom trawling is banned.

The trawlers carried out 3,500 hours of suspected fishing activity in protected waters off the coasts of Ireland, France, Spain and Portugal.

They were tracked by Bloom, a non-profit conservation body, which used satellite data to monitor the paths of the vessels in the protected zones. This data can typically show whether a vessel is fishing because its path will run back and forth across the same area - suggesting that many of the vessels were bottom trawling.

The EU closed 87 areas in European waters to bottom trawling in November 2022, ranging from 400 metres to 800 metres in depth. Ocean conservation organisations are now calling for Spain, France and Portugal to properly implement the ban in these protected waters.