Closed areas · By rule
186 closures where gear dragged across the seabed is prohibited, watched from space. Together they cover 73.9 thousand km².
Bottom-towed gear is fishing equipment dragged along the seabed behind a vessel: bottom trawls, beam trawls, scallop dredges and similar. It is banned in more UK closures than any other activity, because the damage these closures were created to prevent is damage to the seabed itself — to reefs, seagrass, maerl beds and the burrowed mud that takes decades to recover.
The crucial point, and the one most easily got wrong: a bottom-towed gear ban is not a ban on fishing. Static gear — creels, pots, set nets and lines, which are left in place rather than towed — is normally still permitted. A creel boat working inside one of these areas is very often fishing entirely lawfully, and a vessel seen fishing here is not evidence of an offence until the gear is established.
That is why CAUGHT treats gear as one of the three independent factors every case must satisfy, and why most of the cases recorded in these areas are resolved rather than upheld. Satellite data shows a vessel fishing; it does not show what it was fishing with.
A case is a reason to look, not a verdict — most are examined and resolved. Every case is judged on three independent factors and nothing reads CAUGHT until all three are strong and a person has reviewed it. How a case is made.
By rule: No-take zones Trawling Dredging All seabed fishing
By nation: Scotland England Wales Northern Ireland Isle of Man Jersey
The full A–Z of all closures · Download the closure dataset · See live cases on the map