Lewis Smith, Times Online 20 Mar 08;
Conservationists are urging the Government to create five protection zones in the North Sea and to ban fishing in them to give fish stocks a chance to recover.
Commercial stocks including cod, haddock, turbot and monkfish would be among the species that would most benefit, but a fishing ban would aid the entire ecosystem, according to a report published today by the WWF.
Other wildlife expected to flourish would be seals, dolphins and the rare angel shark. The common skate, once abundant but now all but gone from the North Sea, might even reestablish itself as a commercial species.
The protection areas, which would cover a total of 5.08 per cent of the North Sea, should be trailblazers for a network that conservationists hope will eventually cover 30 per cent of the region, say the researchers.
Protection zones around Britain’s coastline are likely to form a central part of proposals contained in the Government’s draft marine Bill, which is expected to be published within weeks. Parts of Dogger Bank and the Moray Firth are among the areas suggested as the best places for experimental protection zones in the report, A Return to Abundance: A Case for Marine Reserves in the North Sea.
Giles Bartlett, Fisheries Policy Officer of WWF, said: “Under present fisheries management policies, species and habitats will continue to decline. It is vital that we rebuild resilience in North Sea ecosystems. With fishing bans in place, species of fish that have declined can reestablish themselves. WWF urges the Government immediately to implement a network of experimental marine reserves that can be used to strengthen fisheries management in the North Sea and deliver lasting protection to the full spectrum of marine wildlife.”
Main fish species in the North Sea are estimated to have declined by at least 50 per cent and up to 98 per cent over the past century. Trawling the seabed has destroyed much of the natural habitat.
However, the Scottish Fishermen’s Federation described the report as “fundamentally flawed” and said that the “unique nature of the mixed fisheries” in the North Sea meant that it was wrong to assume that research showing positive effects from protection zones in other parts of the world would apply off the East Coast of Britain. The SSF added: “We believe that introducing marine protected areas on the scale proposed by WFF would have a devastating impact on the livelihoods of Scottish fishermen and would also affect the fish supply chain to the consumer.”
Third of North Sea should be marine reserve
Paul Eccleston, The Telegraph 20 Mar 08;
Almost a third of the North Sea should be set aside for a network of marine reserves needed to preserve fish stocks, a new report says.
WWF - formerly the World Wildlife Fund - says the experimental reserves would also help protect the habitat on which many fish species depend.
Fisheries management schemes had failed to protect commercially important fish such as cod, haddock and plaice and there was now an urgent need for protected areas.
WWF claims that some fish had declined by as much as 90 per cent since 1990 and the skate, once common in the North Sea, had now almost disappeared.
In the report, A Return to Abundance: A Case for Marine Reserves in the North Sea, WWF calls for a network of five experimental marine reserves that will improve the sustainability of fisheries, protect biodiversity, and help establish a healthy ecosystem.
Fisheries Policy Officer Giles Bartlett, said: "Under present fisheries management policies, species and habitats will continue to decline. It is vital that we rebuild resilience in North Sea ecosystems.
"WWF urges the Government to immediately implement a network of experimental marine reserves that can be used to strengthen fisheries management in the North Sea, and deliver lasting protection to the full spectrum of marine wildlife."
WWF is one of several conservation groups calling on the Government to include protection zones as part of the UK Marine Bill.
It claims a network of protected areas would give vulnerable species and habitats time to recover from damage and disturbance caused by human activitity and adapt to the pressures of climate change without hitting the fishing industry.
The report says the trial reserves will displace less than three per cent of UK demersal trawling and less than 11 per cent of UK beam trawling.
The proposed network includes sites close to the Dogger Bank, the North Norfolk Sandbanks and north of the Shetlands has been selected as nursery and spawning areas.
The most intensively fished areas would be excluded from the network in order to reduce the impact on the fishing industry. Once they had proved their worth they could extended to cover almost one-third of the North Sea.
The report recommends the reserves should exclude all types of fishing to avoid bycatch, and be closed off all year to prevent a surge in fishing before or after the period of closure.
The reserves would enable the Government to manage the entire ecosystem rather than individual species and would create an opportunity to reduce fishing to more sustainable levels.
Giles Bartlett said: "The location of marine reserves need to take into account several factors, and should not simply result from an emergency response to the latest crisis for a particular species. We are proposing a network that will represent and protect North Sea biodiversity and will displace as little fishing effort as possible.
"The establishment of marine reserves and a reduction in fishing effort should make it possible to recover some of the lost productivity of the North Sea, producing sustainability and long-term security for the fishing industry."
