Part of the North Sea floor is now an officially protected area

It is actually a formality, and yet it is cause for great joy: since Thursday, 5 percent of the Dutch North Sea floor has been officially protected area. With European approval, so-called bottom-disturbing fishing is now prohibited on the Cleaver Bank, the Central Oyster Grounds and the Frisian Front – each over a thousand square kilometers and together slightly larger than the province of Drenthe.

“A milestone on the North Sea and great news for nature”, director Wytske Postma of the North Sea Foundation applauds. “After decades of human activity, the North Sea nature is doing very badly, which now has the chance to recover and flourish.”

North Sea Agreement

So far, only 0.3 percent of the Dutch seabed has been protected. The North Sea Agreement between the government, the energy sector, fisheries and environmental organizations stipulates that this must be 15 percent by 2030.

“They are three very different areas,” Postma explains. “The Cleaver Bank is actually an old river bed with stones, the Oyster Grounds have a sand structure and the Frisian Front has currents because the North Sea goes into the depths here. Leaving all this alone is good for biodiversity, fish stocks and the climate.” After all, trawl nets that disturb the seabed also release the carbon that has been sequestered in the seabed.

Klaverbank and Friese Front have already been designated as Natura 2000 areas, but this protection is less extensive and mainly concerns the foraging and resting possibilities of species of seabirds. The North Sea Foundation is working to ensure that the Bruine Bank, which has been a Natura 2000 area for more than a year, also falls under the strict seabed rules.