It was in the murky waters of the North Sea that scientists first realised something had gone terribly wrong with our marine environment. In one of the most inhospitable sites under British sovereignty, they discovered magnificent coral blooms three times the height of a man and of a type previously unknown to science.
What followed was even more startling. Acoustic surveys revealed a series of mysterious wounds across the extraordinary formations. Eventually a culprit was identified: they had been gouged by deep-sea fishing equipment. Even here, beneath hundreds of feet of water, man had made his mark.
Having emptied Britain’s shallow coastal strip of its once bountiful fish stocks, fishermen are now wrecking our last virgin territory: the sea bed.
