Greenpeace

Greenpeace activists have built an underwater “rock barrier” to stop harmful fishing practices in UK marine protected areas.

The environmental group secretly completed the barrier last week, aiming to shut down 55 square miles of Brighton’s coastline, one-fifth of its total area, due to threats from destructive bottom trawling.

It is expected to prevent the nets from reaching the seabed and affecting other forms of ocean life.

The ghost fishing is killing dolphins, whales and turtles

How to bottom trawling

It is a fishing practice that involves dragging very heavy nets across the seabed to catch large amounts of fish. It is commonly used in commercial fishing for this reason. It has been called the marine equivalent of deforestation.

Greenpeace disagrees with this method because it is “indiscriminate” in what is caught, creating a huge impact on the biodiversity of the oceans.

New Zealand trawling destroyed up to 3,000 tonnes of deep-sea coral last year