Closed areas · By rule
10 closures where every kind of fishing is prohibited, watched from space. Together they cover 88 km².
A no-take zone is the strictest marine closure there is: all fishing is prohibited, by any method and any vessel. There is no gear that is permitted and no licence that makes it lawful, which is what separates these places from the rest of the UK’s protected waters.
They are also very rare. Of the closures CAUGHT watches, the overwhelming majority ban one kind of fishing — usually gear towed across the seabed — while leaving other methods lawful. Only the areas listed here ban the activity outright.
That makes them the one class of closure where CAUGHT does not have to establish what gear a vessel was using. Everywhere else, a boat seen fishing inside a closure may be fishing perfectly legally, and proving otherwise means proving the gear — which is why most cases resolve. In a no-take zone the gear argument does not arise, because no gear is allowed.
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: Bottom-towed gear 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