SUPERTRAWLERS spent 2,963 hours fishing in UK Marine Protected Areas (MPA) in 2019, a Greenpeace investigation has revealed.

In October, the second-largest trawler in the world, banned from Australian waters, was spotted off the coast of the Isle of Wight.

Margiris ­— a 142m long Lithuanian fishing vessel thought to process 250 tonnes of fish a day ­— was seen off the coast of Ventnor.

Mike Curtis of Captain Stan's fish shop in Bembridge had spoke at the time of how it was "a sad day for the fishing around the Isle of Wight".

A week later, a petition was launched by Bembridge resident Alistair Chisholm, calling on the UK Government to ban such trawlers and remove them from UK waters.

The petition garnered more than 17,000 signatures in less than a week.

A Greenpeace investigation has now revealed 25 supertrawlers were active in UK waters in 2019, all operating legally, spending time fishing in 39 MPAs.

The organisation has since launched its own petition, of which 135,226 people have signed, urging the UK government to ban supertrawlers from fishing in MPAs.

It says one of the areas most heavily fished in by supertrawlers in 2019 was the Southern North Sea, created to safeguard porpoises.

It says 1,105 porpoises died in fishing nets in 2019.

Chris Thorne, oceans campaigner at Greenpeace UK, said: "Our government allowing destructive supertrawlers to fish for thousands of hours every year in MPAs makes a mockery of the word ‘protected’.

"Even an hour of supertrawler activity inside an ecologically sensitive marine environment is too much, let alone almost 3,000.

“For our government to be taken seriously as a leader in marine protection, it must ban supertrawler operations in the UK’s MPAs and not allow the flawed status quo to continue."

To sign the petition, go to https://secure.greenpeace.org.uk/page/s/supertrawlers?1]