Stephen Fry urges public to join call for urgent Government action on UK oceans

The actor has teamed up with the Blue Marine Foundation to raise awareness over issues like bottom trawling and overfishing.

Stephen Fry at BBC Broadcasting House earlier this week as the actor teams up with the Blue Marine Foundation on the Seas the Day campaign (James Manning/PA) (PA Wire)

Stephen Fry is urging the public to join calls for Government action to save the UK’s oceans in its first 100 days in office.

The actor has teamed up with the Blue Marine Foundation, a charity dedicated to restoring the ocean to health, to raise awareness over issues like bottom trawling and overfishing.

In a video shared online and social media on Wednesday, he said: “Our oceans sustains all life on Earth as we know it.

The time to act is now; reach out to your local MP and tell them we won’t stand idly while the ocean suffers

Stephen Fry

“Not only does it provide us with food, but it helps stabilise the climate, ensuring life on Earth as we know it. But it needs our help.”

Throwing his support behind the newly-launched Seas the Day campaign, the actor urged constituents across the country to contact their local MP and ask them to pledge three main actions to protect UK oceans.

The first is to call for a ban on bottom trawling in marine protected areas (MPAs), a practice that involves using heavy nets that can be as large as a football field.

The method, which is currently permitted in almost all the UK’s MPAs, can damage vital habitats, such as reefs, kelp forests and seagrass meadows, and can scoop up untargeted wildlife.

The second is to end overfishing by bringing fishing catch limits within scientific advice.

In the video, Fry said that last year more than half of the quotas set by the government were above the advice of scientists.

“Overfishing depletes fish stocks faster than they can reproduce which leads to population decline and at times collapsed,” he said.

The final point is to address social inequality by reforming how quota is allocated in UK fishing, with two thirds currently being owned by just 25 companies.

Fry said: “This inequality means the local small scale fisheries are losing while a few large industrial-sized organisations line their pockets.

“This has got to stop if we are to end overfishing and bring our ocean back to health, benefiting both people and planet.”

The actor added that these requests address some of the most devastating environmental disasters “happening not just under our noses, but within our control”.

“The time to act is now; reach out to your local MP and tell them we won’t stand idly while the ocean suffers,” he said.

The Blue Marine Website has provided contact details for MPs and more information on the Seas the Day campaign: https://www.bluemarinefoundation.com/campaign/seastheday/

PA has contacted the Environment Department (Defra) for comment.