LA SERIGRAFÍA MÁS GRANDE DEL MUNDO VISITA EL PARLAMENTO DE LA UE EN BRUSELAS

13.10.2025

⬆️ The Net brightens up the Espace Lépold in front of the EU Parliament. It’s a drab place filled with drab ideas – it’s time to remind MEPs it doesn’t have to be this way. S.Staines.
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To mark the beginning of Ocean Week EU citizens are gathering at the EU Parliament to highlight their concern over inaction on Ocean policies. It’s no good discussing these issues behind closed doors, it’s time to make the restoration of a healthy Ocean THE issue across Europe.

Today, in Brussels, the world’s largest screen print of a bottom trawling net, ‘The Net’, was unfurled by the hands of many concerned EU citizens across the esplanade of the EU Parliament. Unfurling ‘The Net’ also marks another year in which the EU has failed to stop the EU industrial fleet from trashing the seabed, needlessly slaughtering tonnes of marine life and overfishing coastal waters across the world.

El destino del Océano depende de todos nosotros.
Nuestras intervenciones dependen de su apoyo.

Apóyanos

Contacto con nosotros

Ocean Rebellion demands the EU stops its fishing fleet from bottom trawling before it’s too late. If the EU continues to do nothing our coastal waters (and the coastal waters of all the other nations the EU fleet bottom trawls) will be destroyed.

⬆️ Release the net!!!!!!!!!
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⬆️ A long net takes a long time to make but it only takes a few seconds to get out, much the annoyance of EU security. Photo by João Daniel Pereira.
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‘The Net’ is hand crafted and comprises over 1,000 individual screen prints. But it isn’t created to break world records. Its huge size of 150metres represents not the length of a bottom trawling net—but the width of the jaws at its mouth—which actually can be wider still. So wide that ten jumbo jets could fly inside (Oceanographic). These huge bottom trawling nets are weighted and dragged across the seabed destroying corals, seaweed and catching any marine life in their path. The most alarming thing is that bottom trawling happens systematically in marine protected areas all across the EU. This means countless sea turtles, dolphins, sharks and smaller fish are suffocated by the greed of EU industrial fisheries (under the protection of the EU leaders) and then just thrown overboard. This accounts for 93% of all discards in the EU; once bottom trawling is history, discards will almost end.

At 800 – 1,000 metres the depth of a bottom trawling net is even bigger, a distance so long it would take us at least two months to print a net to represent it!

⬆️ Out comes the net – run! Fotografía de João Daniel Pereira.
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Economic madness
The idiocy and hypocrisy of EU economic policy beggars belief—bottom trawling costs ordinary Europeans up to €11 billion every year in subsidies and carbon emissions—including the enormous carbon footprint of sediment disturbance (Millage, Pristine Seas) and by razing of seagrass meadows which are 35 times better than rainforest at absorbing killer carbon (Client Earth). The emissions from bottom trawling’s sea grass damage alone is equivalent to nearly half the total of US transport emissions, and the sum total of bottom trawling emissions are at the scale of global aviation’s (Nature).

And the even madder is that without subsidies, explicit and implicit, bottom trawling wouldn’t even be profitable—European governments directly spend about €1.3 billion a year subsidising this disaster (National Geographic), and yet EU leaders are keen to continue trawling in Marine Protected Areas, set aside for the survival of at least some residual sea life, while pretending they care about the Ocean. Si se concedieran las mismas subvenciones y ayudas a los pescadores artesanales, in terms of money and easy to understand policies, the EU would help both its coastal waters and its coastal communities to flourish. Why is this too much to ask of our EU institutions? Is it because they’re not ours after all, but the industrial fishing industry’s?

Aren’t they answerable to us as EU taxpayers?

⬆️ Security arrives. This time they don’t want to arrest the net but they do want it gone. Unlike a real bottom trawling net our net doesn’t harm whatever we drag it across, everything beneath is left unspoiled. Photo by S. Staines.
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Ocean Week is all about how the EU can lead the world by showing how the Ocean can flourish if we treat it with care.

This will only happen if it is backed up with real action.

deeds not words

The EU sponsors destruction of the Ocean. Fish populations are under more threat than ever. And the EU’s member states allow their fishing fleets to maximise their ‘legal’ colonial overfishing in places where local fisherfolk go hungry as a result, while being ultra-soft on illegal fishing and subsidising illegal and destructive ‘legal’ fishing alike. Also they are increasing carbon emissions by subsidising and supporting the fishing industry’s use of fossil fuels. When you add their inability to actually protect Marine Protected Areas (the EU fishing fleet regularly bottom trawls Marine Protected Areas) what you are left with is a complete shitshow of lies.

⬆️ A more democratic approach to bottom trawling would mean an end to this destructive fishing practice – why does so much marine life have to die for so little benefit? No benefit to marine life and no benefit to small fisheries, and it costs billions in subsidies – the only benefit goes to already rich industrial fisheries. Photo by João Daniel Pereira.
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Michael Collins from Ocean Rebellion says:
"Imagínense el daño que causa una red del tamaño de diez aviones jumbo cuando se arrastra por el fondo marino. Atrapa todo lo que encuentra a su paso, destruye la vida marina y libera el carbono 'azul' allí almacenado. La pesca de arrastre de fondo emite más gases de efecto invernadero que la aviación. Son muchos gases".

Louis Dannatt also from Ocean Rebellion says:
“Humanity has declared war on fish and we’re winning. The Ocean is so depleted that small fishing communities are on the edge of survival and areas of former plenty are now empty. Over 100 million people rely on inshore subsistence and small-scale artisanal fishing for their daily food and livelihood − often using the same waters emptied by EU trawlers. It is a necessity that the EU leads the way by ending industrial fishing. If fishing is decreased by 80% EU wide we will simultaneously restore our seas and help coastal communities by reinvigorating traditional fishing methods and rewarding Ocean care – and all this can start by redirecting existing subsidies.”

Clive Russell, de Ocean Rebellion, dice:
“We demand EU institutions and all marine non-governmental bodies to Tell the Truth about destructive fishing and stop greenwashing a dirty industry with ‘sustainability’ lies. We must end bottom trawling worldwide, NOW, together with a just transition for displaced fisheries workers.”

Bridget Turgoose, adds:
“The Ocean can recover quickly, but only if we halt the carnage now; within a few years these precious ecosystems will regenerate and fish populations will stabilise. We just need to give life a chance, if we don’t, there will be no more fish in the sea.”

⬆️ The Net is very photogenic but as recent footage of bottom trawling has shown the reality is very different. Photo by João Daniel Pereira.
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La Rebelión del Océano exige:

It’s time to end bottom trawling. The EU can start by really protecting Marine Protected Areas and banning bottom trawling across the EU fishing fleet. By sending out a clear commitment to the Ocean the EU will lead the world by turning the tide against pérdida de biodiversidad marina. Diciendo no a la industria pesquera mundial y sí a sus propios ciudadanos, la UE puede recuperar el asombro y el orgullo por sus mares. Que, con las subvenciones y políticas adecuadas, ayudarán a las comunidades costeras a convertirse en custodios de sus mares locales y a cuidar el Océano.

You can read Professor Chris Armstrong’s diagnosis of current regulatory ills aquí.