Dr Sheehan said large areas of the bay had already been “heavily degraded” by 2008.<\/p>\n
“[MPAs] tried to prevent the most destructive fishing methods so the seabed habitats that are so important for conservation and fisheries can be protected,” she continued.<\/p>\n
Dr Sheehan said species including scallops, conga eel and black sea bream and appeared to have benefited from the ban.<\/p>\n
“We keep seeing positive change, year on year. <\/p>\n
“We still haven’t go a plateau in the recovery. We’re nowhere near there – it’s still recovering, year on year.”<\/p>\n
The government’s plan would see similar protections extended to 41 of England’s 181 MPAs.<\/p>\n
“It needs to happen – I’m in full support of this and it will have huge positive benefits for our marine environment,” Dr Sheehan said.<\/p>\n
The UK’s National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations has opposed the move to ban bottom trawling.<\/p>\n
Chief executive Mike Cohen previously said: “Trawling does not damage most of the seabed. <\/p>\n
“Trawls penetrate the sediment very little, if at all, in most areas and trawling has been carried out for well over 100 years,” he said.<\/p>\n
A 12-week consultation will run until 1 September and will seek the views of the marine and fishing industry.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dr Sheehan said large areas of the bay had already been “heavily degraded” by 2008. “[MPAs] tried to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":175807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3843],"tags":[728,70,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-175806","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-environment","8":"tag-environment","9":"tag-science","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=175806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/175806\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/175807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=175806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=175806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=175806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}