Assessed and closed: activity and rule cannot be established on any evidence available to us, so no amount of work on the vessel could settle this case.
Every CAUGHT case is assessed on three independent questions, and
the weakest of the three decides. A case reads CAUGHT only when all three are
established and a person has reviewed it.
Activitymoderate
Was it fishing, here, and then?
Apparent fishing, but below the bar for a strong call (3.9 h, 1 bout(s), 0 AIS fix(es)).
We hold no AIS track for this vessel over this event (0 fixes), so the only measures available are GFW's own dwell and bout counts, which are fixed and do not improve on re-examination.
What would settle it: AIS coverage of this vessel during the event, or independent corroboration. Neither is obtainable by research — both need a data source we do not yet have.
Vesselunknown
What gear does this boat actually use?
No hand-verified gear record for this vessel. GFW's inferred label is a behavioural guess and is documented to mislabel inshore creel boats as trawlers, so it cannot carry a case.
Ruleunknown
What was prohibited there, then, for that gear?
Rule reviewed and NOT resolved: Article 4(4) carves demersal trawling out of the prohibition, and the carve-out reaches every vessel and every case we hold here. It reads: "Paragraphs (2) and (3) do not apply to the deployment or use of a demersal trawl (other than a beam trawl) by a vessel with a gross tonnage of no more than 120 tonnes, and registered as such under Part II of the Merchant Shipping Act 1995, within those parts of the protected area which are described in Schedule 1." Three things have to be true together for a case here to be a breach, and we can establish none of them. (1) TONNAGE DOES NOT EXCLUDE ANYONE: every vessel with a case in this closure is far under the threshold — JENISKA 42 GT, REBEKAH JAYNE 76 GT, ATLAS (CN258, Campbeltown) 66 GT, JJ 15.56 GT, all from the MMO list at 1 September 2026. (2) GEOMETRY IS UNDECIDABLE FROM WHAT WE HOLD: the Schedule 1 polygons were transcribed from the Order and every one of the 10 bottom-towed cases has an apparent-fishing bbox that OVERLAPS a Schedule 1 area (10-38% of the bbox), with representative positions sitting 68 m to 2.1 km outside the boundary. Six of the ten are within 600 m of the Schedule 1 line. We cannot say which side of that line the gear was actually on. (3) GEAR IS NOT ENOUGH EITHER: the carve-out permits a demersal TRAWL but not a beam trawl and NOT a demersal seine net, which article 4(11) defines separately and leaves inside the prohibition. So even a vessel established as bottom-towed is not thereby caught — for JENISKA, a recorded dual-purpose seiner/trawler, the seine/trawl distinction is the whole case, and apparent fishing cannot make it.
Not established: vessel; rule.
A case is only as strong as its weakest factor, so this one cannot read CAUGHT until that is settled.
Check it yourself
Nothing here asks to be taken on trust. The full report sets out every source,
every measurement and everything we could not establish.
What this is, and what it isn't. A CAUGHT case is a reason to look,
not a verdict, and this page is not a finding that an offence took place. Vessel names
and identifiers come from publicly broadcast AIS data, which can be wrong or
mis-attributed. Most fishing inside UK marine protected areas is currently
legal; CAUGHT only flags places where a rule already exists.
If you own or operate this vessel and believe it has been mischaracterised, write to
contact@caught.org.uk — corrections are
welcomed and we publish them. Your right of reply is set out in our
terms.