Implementing genuine Marine Protected Areas: a possible transition!

21 May 2025

As humanity now faces daily climate disasters and scientists warn that the ‘very fabric of life on Earth’ is under threat, experts from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) emphasise that protecting and restoring ecosystems is the second most effective way of addressing the climate emergency. Alongside international biodiversity experts (IPBES), they are therefore calling for the creation of a coherent and effective network of marine protected areas to combat biodiversity collapse and climate change.

Contrary to these scientific recommendations, however, France — the world’s second largest maritime power, and host country of the upcoming United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC) in Nice — protects less than 0.1% of its metropolitan waters. However, the implementation of genuine marine protected areas that are closed to trawling and other destructive fishing practices is within reach, as around 560 fishing vessels potentially depend on ‘protected’ marine areas and spend more than 20% of their time there.

Over the last hundred years, we have depleted the ocean’s resources: predatory fish populations in the North Atlantic have declined by 90%, populations of large fish in the North Sea have fallen by 99.2%, and nearly 60% of fish populations in the Mediterranean are still overexploited. IPBES has identified the main cause of ocean destruction over the last fifty years as fishing. Industrial fishing, and trawling in particular, causes considerable damage to marine ecosystems by destroying habitats, reducing fish populations, and impoverishing biodiversity. This situation compromises not only food security, but also threatens small-scale fishing, which is essential to the economies of coastal regions and provides important local employment.

Real marine protected areas have a positive impact on the climate, biodiversity and small-scale fishers.

The solution to the ongoing degradation of the ocean, climate, jobs and public finances is marine protection. Creating real marine protected areas covering 30% of our waters and prohibiting industrial infrastructure, activities and high-impact gear, such as various forms of trawling, is an essential step towards ending the destruction of marine ecosystems and the financial dependence of the fishing sector on the state, as well as the social decline of the small-scale fishing sector. This must be accompanied by the establishment of strictly protected zones, covering one third of these areas, in which no extractive activities take place, to ensure effective and sustainable protection of ecosystems.

Coastal fishermen using passive gear such as lines, traps and nets will benefit most from such a marine protection policy, as they will directly benefit from the spillover effect generated by the strictly protected areas. Indeed, implementing genuine MPAs can lead to more abundant fish populations, larger fish and greater diversity. Scientific studies show that the biomass of fish can be multiplied by 4.5 after the establishment of a strictly protected area, while another study shows that, thanks to the spillover effect, fish abundance immediately outside protected areas increases by 33% and biomass by 54%.

Learn more about the benefits of MPAs.

Over the last decade, a scientific consensus has emerged on what constitutes effective protection of the marine environment:

• In 2016, at its World Congress in Hawaii, the IUCN called on States to ‘prohibit environmentally damaging industrial activities and infrastructure development in all protected areas’.
• In 2019, the IUCN published its detailed recommendations, specifying that industrial fishing must be excluded without exception from so-called ‘protected’ areas.
• In 2021, at its World Congress in Marseille, the IUCN adopted a definition of ‘industrial fishing’ for protected areas as ‘fishing by motorised vessels (> 12m length x 6m width)’, or ‘fishing using trawl gear towed or towed along the seabed or water column, and fishing using purse seines and large longlines, can be defined as industrial fishing’.

Dependence on marine protected areas

To reconcile the protection of the ocean with social justice, it is necessary to support fishermen who currently operate in so-called ‘protected’ areas and who could be affected by the implementation of international recommendations for the protection of the marine environment. Ifremer, which has adopted a ‘case-by-case’ approach, recognises that ‘a significant proportion of trawling and dredging activity actually takes place in MPAs’, accounting for around 33% of days at sea and 25% of the value of landings from bottom trawling for vessels over 12 metres in 2022. Genuine marine protected areas must therefore be established using measures to support vessels whose economic activity depends on these fishing grounds, which they will no longer be able to access. This applies to all vessels over 12 metres, as well as all trawlers, regardless of size.

There are currently 3,911 active fishing vessels in mainland France (1). The vast majority of these vessels will not be affected by the implementation of marine protected areas and will even benefit from them. Today, small-scale inshore fishing, carried out by vessels under 12 metres using passive gear and representing 64% of the fleet, will still be able to operate in two-thirds of the surface area of these protected areas.

Looking beyond the small-scale coastal fishing fleet in France, our analyses show that we have the solutions within our grasp to meet the challenge of banning trawling and vessels over 12 metres in protected areas.

• The French mainland fleet has 275 trawlers (both bottom and pelagic) measuring under 12 metres. However, it is impossible to know the extent to which these trawlers depend on so-called ‘protected’ areas. This is because European vessels under 15 metres are not required to be equipped with an AIS system, although some of these small vessels have done so voluntarily. This is the only system available to civil society that enables them to track the movements of fishing vessels on platforms such as Global Fishing Watch. Nevertheless, this initial census provides an upper limit on the number of trawlers under 12 metres that could be affected, some of which, depending on their dependence on protected areas, could request accompanying measures.
• According to Global Fishing Watch data, 286 deep-sea vessels in mainland France, including those between 12 and 24 metres in length, depended on protected areas in 2024, spending more than 20% of their time there. This dependency threshold, established at the time of Brexit, enables us to assess the real impact of excluding these vessels from effectively protected areas and to develop appropriate transition and support scenarios. Thus, 37% of the studied vessels are not dependent a priori, and 15% of these have spent less than 5% of their time in MPAs.’Dependent’ fishermen, who spend more than 20% of their time in protected areas, should be offered compensation and/or aid to help them transition to small-scale coastal fishing, if they wish.
• Large-scale industrial fishing, which is carried out by vessels measuring over 24 metres in length, accounts for 4.5% of the French fleet in mainland France, comprising 175 vessels. These vessels are extremely mobile and are designed to operate offshore for long periods. They can therefore easily shift their fishing efforts outside of protected marine areas. In order to protect ecosystems and coastal fishing, these vessels must be excluded from marine protected areas and the coastal strip.

Therefore, a maximum of 561 trawlers and vessels over 12 metres need to be supported to implement genuine marine protected areas in metropolitan France. While further government research is needed to plan and organise the sector’s transition with a fine territorial grid, this study reveals that implementing a public policy to protect the marine environment is possible. This is especially true given that the necessary funding to implement the policy and support these fishermen is available.

The only thing missing is the will to innovatively allocate the subsidies already granted to the French fishing industry.

Dredgers receive exceptional treatment due to their limited spatial impact and high added value.

Dredges are mainly used for producing scallops by around 448 fishing vessels in mainland France. This fishing technique involves ploughing through the sediment to dislodge the shells and has a significant impact on the seabed. Therefore, it is inconceivable to designate areas where dredge fishing takes place as ‘protected’. Yet this is the approach taken by France, which, in pursuit of an absurd policy of numbers, has designated certain historical dredge fishing areas as ‘protected’.

As research by scientists at Institut Agro has shown, the seabed destruction caused by dredging has historically been confined to certain areas, such as the bays of Saint-Brieuc and Granville. In the Atlantic, dredges abrade an average of 0.4 km² per tonne of fish caught, compared to 5.3 km² per tonne by demersal trawlers. In the Mediterranean, demersal trawls abrade 30 times more square kilometres than dredges do.

Given the additional income that scallops generate for small-scale artisanal fishermen in certain historic fishing areas via a model resembling open-sea aquaculture with seeding, it is possible that the company’s preference is to sacrifice these already highly modified ecosystems in order to maintain this specific activity in its historic locations, where dredging has shaped the coastal economy for decades.

Our vision is that the areas that must be protected first from the perspective of marine habitats are undoubtedly the historic dredge fishing areas, the impact of which must be frozen. Beyond these historic scallop production areas, France must ban dredge fishing in all designated ‘protected’ areas and prevent the creation of new areas where it could be practised. The recent development of dredging within the Iroise Marine Park, for example, must be stopped immediately, particularly given that this activity is now taking place in vulnerable ecosystems such as the maerl beds.

Financial support for fishermen dependent on MPAs

In order to finance the implementation of genuine protected areas, and the economic and social measures required to support the fishermen affected, the State must mobilise funding that is currently earmarked for industrial fishing.

The aim is to redirect subsidies from industrial fishing towards the social and ecological transition of the sector, in order to effectively reconcile the protection of the oceans with social justice.

1. This can be achieved by gradually ending the tax exemption on fuel for vessels over 24 metres in length. These vessels represent only 4.5% of the fleet, yet they have received almost 47% of fuel subsidies, worth an estimated €100 million.
2. This can be achieved by earmarking the share of the tax on offshore wind farms allocated to the fishing industry for its own social and ecological transition. At the Salon de l’Agriculture, the French president and Minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher signed an ‘industrial strategy contract’ with representatives of the industrial fishing lobby, providing an unprecedented subsidy of €700 million.
3. Part of the European funds should be earmarked exclusively for the social and ecological transition of the fishing industry, with priority given to small-scale coastal fishing. For example, France has so far only spent 22% of the funding for the European FEAMPA 2021-2027 programme: €442 million is therefore still available and should be partly dedicated to the transition and implementation of real marine protected areas.

Therefore, a financed transition scenario exists for announcing, within the framework of the United Nations Conference on the Oceans, the implementation of a genuine public policy for the protection of marine ecosystems. The only thing missing today is the political will to commit to this approach.

 

Further information: research methodology

This groundbreaking analysis covers marine protected areas in mainland France and the French fleet. Our data comes from two main sources:

• For the composition of the French fleet (number of vessels, distribution between passive and dragging methods, etc.), our data comes from Evaluation des performances environnementales, économiques et sociales des flottilles de pêche: Bilan France, which was carried out by the Institut Agro and the MNHN and averaged over the period 2017–2021. To extract data for mainland France, we made calculations based on this data, taking into account only fleets operating in the North East Atlantic and the Mediterranean (ATL and MEC).

• Regarding the spatial distribution of fishing effort (e.g. proportion of vessels dependent on marine protected areas), our data comes from Global Fishing Watch for the European Union in 2024, cross-referenced with the European fishing fleet register (version downloaded in March 2025).

 

(1) Calculations based on the number of vessels in fleets aggregated by supra-region, produced by the Institut Agro and the MNHN (excluding tropical tuna vessels).