Article by Facts4EU - 11 EU factory ships, each longer than Wembley’s pitch, are hoovering up UK’s fish.
- Michael Julien
- Apr 26
- 5 min read
They rake in thousands of UK fish per day but never land their catches at UK ports. Fancy a floating carpet of 100,000 rotting fish carcasses off the coast? It happened to the French.
To listen to President Macron talk over the past few years whenever he complains about the UK’s (very generous) treatment of French fishing boats, you would think these were all father and son operations. The reality is that most EU fishing in UK waters is on an industrial, conglomerate level, worth many millions of pounds.
Out of the licences the UK has issued to EU vessels this year to allow them to continue fishing in UK waters after Brexit, the most significant of these licences is for a ship that is almost supertanker-sized.
The Annelies Ilena carries the Polish flag, is Dutch-owned, and is 472 feet long (145m) with a gross tonnage of over 14,000 tonnes. This makes it significantly heavier than two British Type 23 guided missile frigates combined.
Its length is the equivalent of 13 London Routemaster buses laid end-to-end
To put it another way, it measures 130 feet longer than the Wembley football pitch
Its nets cover an area larger than 450 Wimbledon tennis courts
The EU has an entire fleet of factory fishing ships
The Annelies Ilena is not alone in being in a ‘supertanker’ class when it comes to EU fishing vessels. Below, the UKFC summarises the extraordinary statistics of the EU’s industrial fishery complex. To be clear, these are all fishing vessels which have been licensed by the UK authorities to fish in UK waters.
Already prosecuted by one EU country, banned by countries around the world
Licensed to fish in the UK’s waters by the UK authorities, the Annelies Ilena has been prosecuted by EU member country Ireland and is unwelcome in other jurisdictions around the world.
So unwelcome has it been that the ship had to fish for nine months of the year off Mauritania, west Africa. Following the decimation of fish stocks in these waters, however, five years later it was expelled. Now it is plying its trade in UK waters.
On board, the ship has the capacity to process vast quantities of fish – said to be up to 7,000 tonnes on one trip - with major refrigeration and production facilities contained within its structure.
At the time of writing the Annelies Ilena is hoovering up vast amounts of fish from UK waters, just 20 nautical miles off the coast of Scotland and is heading south down the east coast of England.
The second-longest EU factory fishing ship, the Willem van der Zwan, is just six feet shorter than the Annelies Ilena at 468 feet long. Dutch-flagged, current maritime geo-positioning shows this ship to be fishing off the Hebrides at the time of writing.
The third-longest EU super-trawler licensed by British authorities this year is the Maartje Theadora, German-flagged but Dutch-owned, and it measures 462 feet end-to-end. After landing its catch in the Dutch port of IJmuiden it is now heading back to the UK waters in the North Sea. In 2012 it was prosecuted by the French (of all countries) and fined over £0.5 million for breaking EU law. It was stopped with £1m pounds’ worth of illegally-caught fish.
Here it is in the English Channel.
One 'accident': a floating carpet of 100,000 rotting fish carcasses off the French coast.
In 2022 the fourth-largest EU factory ship, the Margaris, had an incident when a vast area of ocean off the French coast was covered with 100,000 dead and rotting fish. The owners said a net had broken but a French environmentalist organisation claimed the action was deliberate, to allow the Margaris to dispose of fish caught up in its operations which were not wanted - a so-called 'bycatch'. This vessel is Dutch-owned but carries the flag of Lithuania.
Four hours after the incident the Margaris had resumed fishing about 15 miles away.
Four hours after the incident the Margaris had resumed fishing about 15 miles away.
The industrial scale of EU fishing in UK waters
By any measure the EU fleet fishing in UK waters is enormous. Above we have used vessel length but could as easily have used total tonnage or engine power. The ranking tables would have differed in each case but the end result is the same. A large part of EU fishing in UK waters is big business on an industrial scale.
This industrial type of fishing inevitably produces revenues and profits on a commensurate scale. The UK Fisheries Campaign is calling for this to be an integral part of the negotiations for the renewal of any agreement with the EU after the current arrangement runs out in June next year.
The capacity of these EU factory ships is so large that serious complaints have been made about their ability to decimate fishing stocks in any area they fish. This was the primary reason the Annelies Ilena was told to leave Mauritanian waters. The local fishermen were finding there simply weren’t any fish left for them, even in their very modestly-sized fishing boats.
On top of this is the question of what these factory ships are scooping up from UK waters. Every vessel has a strict quota for certain types of fish, called a ‘Total Allowed Catch’ (TAC), which they must not exceed each year. On top of this, they are prohibited from catching other types of fish altogether as these are endangered.
The question must be asked, given the enormous quantities of fish of all kinds they are hauling in each day, just what level of control is exerted when these ships are out at sea for up to two months at a time?
As far as we know, no representatives of the UK’s marine authorities are present when these factory ships land their enormous catches in EU ports. It seems that the UK must simply take the EU at its word that it is monitoring these vessels on a very regular basis and that their catches are always scrupulously inspected.
The UKFC is calling for an outright ban or the very strictest controls at least on the largest of these factory ships, as well as a rigid system of monitoring and inspection on the remainder. Furthermore, given that catches can be valued at more than £1 million, it seems appropriate to start charging significant annual licence fees for the privilege of being able to fish in the UK’s Exclusive Economic Zone.
We urge all readers to support the UK Fisheries Campaign but also ask that you please, please help Facts4EU to carry on its vital work in defence of independence, sovereignty, democracy and freedom by donating today. Thank you..
[ Sources: UK Marine Management Organisation 2025 | Vessel Finder | French media | Australian media | British Sea Fishing | International Tennis Federation (for comparison with tennis court area) | Transport for London (for comparison with London buses) | House of Commons Library research papers | Greenpeace | Sea Shepherd France ] Politicians and journalists can contact us for details, as ever.
Brexit Facts4EU.Org for the UK Fisheries Campaign, Wed 23 Apr 2025
For this article in pdf, please click here:
Comments