Who Speaks for the Sea?
Who Speaks for the Sea?
By Tom Appleby and Lucy Lennard
The sea beneath our feet
Eight thousand years ago, the Dogger Bank was not a sandbank at all. It was land: a wide, wooded plain stretching between what is now the UK and the continental coast of Europe, crossed by rivers, inhabited by animals and, eventually, people. As sea levels rose at the end of the last ice age, it was slowly inundated. The North Sea swallowed it.
That geological history matters. The organic richness of what was once terrestrial soil, preserved under relatively shallow water, makes the Dogger Bank unusually fertile. It supports a range of marine life that is, in the context of the North Sea, extraordinary: cold- water corals, sea pens, anemones, sharks, rays, long-lived shellfish, and the spawning and nursery grounds for cod, haddock and sole. It is even home to migrating salmon smolts, who head south from Scotland along the former coastline, before heading north again to their feeding grounds in the Arctic. It is not just ecologically significant. It is one of the most historically layered stretches of seafloor in European waters.
Until recently it was also heavily trawled, altering the whole structure of the seabed.
The largest ecosystem on Earth
The ocean covers more than two thirds of the planet’s surface. It generates roughly half the oxygen in the atmosphere, absorbs around a quarter of all CO2 emissions, and regulates temperature and weather systems across the entire globe. It is, by any measure, the largest and most consequential ecosystem on Earth.
It is also, legally speaking, one of the least well protected.
The international framework governing the high seas, UNCLOS, was negotiated in 1982. It is a remarkable achievement of international law, but it predates the scientific consensus on the ocean’s role as a carbon sink and a planetary life support system. It was built on an assumption, widespread at the time, that the ocean’s capacity to absorb damage was essentially unlimited. Decades of evidence since then have shown otherwise. The legal architecture has not kept pace.
Even where UNCLOS sets out sensible criteria for environmental protection and sustainable fishing, the legal mechanisms generally require a coastal state to launch proceedings. Where everyone is breaking the rules, which coastal state is going to complain?
A living experiment
In 2019, Blue Marine Foundation started a legal case against the UK Government, challenging the continued permission of bottom trawling inside the UK’s section of the Dogger Bank.
Upon the UK’s departure from the European Union, wording in the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy which had granted the bloc’s fishing vessels a perceived exemption from environmental law fell away. UK fisheries authorities suddenly found themselves liable to conduct the kind of management practices in offshore marine protected areas which applied to all other industries. The UK could only issue fishing licences if they could demonstrate no harm was caused to the sites.
The UK closed its section of the Dogger Bank to bottom-towed fishing gear in 2022, and undertook to take management measures for all of its other offshore sites for fishing within three years, a promise it has failed to keep: the tranche three proposals, particularly in the South West of England, remain to be managed.
What has happened since is, in scientific terms, a natural experiment unlike any other in the North Sea. Fishing pressure has fallen by 98% and life is returning. Just this year, orcas have been seen back on the Dogger, which is a good sign of a recovering ecosystem, and Blue Marine and others are obtaining a licence to restore the horse mussel beds which used to be present throughout the site. On the Dutch side, trawling continued, and the difference has become visible.
That contrast, and the legal precedent established by the UK case, formed part of the basis for the next step.
Protected means protected
On 11 May this year, the District Court of The Hague ruled that Dutch bottom trawlers can no longer operate in the Dutch section of the Dogger Bank without a permit and a full environmental impact assessment. Blue Marine was one of the four organisations that brought the case, alongside Doggerland Foundation, ARK Rewilding Nederland and ClientEarth.
It was the first ruling in Europe confirming that governments have a legal responsibility to regulate bottom trawling in offshore marine protected areas. The court found that blanket exemptions for fishing inside Natura 2000 protected areas are contrary to nature protection legislation. The burden of proof has shifted: vessels wishing to fish in the protected zone must now demonstrate that their activities cause no harm. For vessels unable to do that, access will be withdrawn.
The problem remained that the EU parts of the Dogger Bank in France and Germany were unprotected. Blue Marine and its collaborators used a different part of the EU Common Fisheries Policy, which placed the burden of proof onto member states to comply with environmental law. Until then, compliance had taken the form of an endless talking shop between member states and the EU, which had few legal teeth to enforce actual management.
The Dutch ruling has significance well beyond the Dutch courts as it is a ruling on European law, which should be applied by other member states to their vessels. It is only a first instance decision, but since it is the first ruling anywhere in the EU on this novel process, and the wording in the legislation is very clear, other member states would be expected to follow similar processes. There will be another case in Germany later this year, which the Dutch case expedited. This is a landmark decision with much broader ramifications.
“This case is important in the UK too, which is why we, a UK charity, were one of the litigants,” Tom Appleby said after the ruling. “We have all signed up to the same international obligations, and protecting the North Sea benefits the environment of the entire region. Seabirds, salmon, cetaceans and seals do not recognise national boundaries.”
What this means for lawyers
The Dogger Bank story is, at its core, a story about what lawyers can do. A campaign that began with a legal challenge to the UK Government produced management measures against one of the most harmful activities we carry out at sea: bottom trawling. That legal action formed part of the factual basis for a ruling that will carry implications across Europe. Similar cases are already active in six other jurisdictions.
Tom Appleby’s point to legal audiences is that the work is not confined to environmental specialists. Blue Marine relies on pro bono legal support across a wide range of disciplines: competition law, to challenge industry exemptions and market distortions; property law, on coastal access and foreshore rights; criminal law, in cases involving illegal fishing and wildlife crime; tort law, on nuisances; and international and European law, to navigate the treaty frameworks governing high seas protection. No specialism is too remote.
“Pretty much every single legal discipline can help,” he told an LSA audience earlier this year. “The system is such a mess, there’s room for us all.”
Lawyers also advise the clients whose decisions shape what happens to the ocean: energy companies, financial institutions, shipping firms, food retailers and developers. The question of marine impact, of emerging regulatory risk around MPAs, of supply chain exposure to illegal or unsustainable catch, is relevant across those transactions. Raising it does not require specialist knowledge. It requires awareness of the direction of travel.
Two things to avoid
The first is accepting the weakening of existing protections. There is real political pressure, in the UK and internationally, to soften environmental obligations in the name of growth and energy security. For the ocean, that pressure manifests in proposed extensions of fishing exemptions, diluted MPA designations, and delayed implementation of the High Seas Treaty. Each concession, in an ecosystem already under stress, compounds.
The second is treating the interests of fishing communities as something to be argued past rather than addressed. The transition to sustainable fishing practice is necessary, but it needs to be a just one. Inshore fishing communities in the UK have already borne significant losses from decades of quota decisions that prioritised short-term yield over stock health. A legal and policy settlement that does not account for that history will not hold.
We can also be overly legalistic in our application of environmental laws. Ocean ecosystems are remarkably dynamic, so approaches such as like-for-like environmental compensation are extremely challenging to achieve, particularly on energy projects. Early engagement with environmental NGOs and other specialists can speed the process up. In reality, court cases such as the Dogger Bank case are relatively rare and a last resort.
Recovery is possible
The Dogger Bank demonstrates this as directly as anything in recent marine conservation. Given genuine protection, the seabed recovers. Species return. The nursery of the North Sea can function again as a nursery.
The law can be part of that. The Dogger Bank case, and the Dutch ruling that followed from it, shows what is possible when legal expertise is brought to bear on the right questions at the right moment. More of those moments are coming. Cases are being built, consultations are open, and organisations like Blue Marine are doing work that the whole legal profession can contribute to, whatever the practice area.
We have seen a huge amount of legislation to protect the environment over the last two decades, but in many places it has fallen short and simply become a record of what is there. The question for us all is: what do we want our oceans to be like? Let’s use the law to bring that about.
Further reading
Blue Marine Foundation: bluemarinefoundation.com
MCS Good Fish Guide: mcsuk.org/goodfishguide
Dogger Bank ruling (11 May 2026): Oceanographic Magazine
Lyme Bay recovery case study: Blue Marine Foundation
UK MPA network: JNCC
Dogger Bank map: Wikipedia
By Imogen O’Rorke, Nature Lead, Achill Legal
