We are proud to be supporting Blue Marine Foundation, as a crew we are passionate about ocean health and believe a collective effort must be made to protect and restore our oceans for the future resilience of the planet. A healthy ocean is critical in the fight against climate change and biodiversity loss, as well as supporting lives and livelihoods in coastal communities. Blue work with decision makers, researchers and local communities to take holistic action. They forge partnerships to ensure the oceans will survive and thrive, combining legal advocacy with integrated conservation and restoration programmes in the UK and around the world
Blue Marine's work centres around creating marine reserves, restoring vital marine habitats, and establishing models of sustainable fishing. Their mission is to see 30 per cent of the world’s ocean under effective protection by 2030, and the other 70 per cent responsibly managed.
As we row clockwise around the UK we will first go past their Sussex Kelp Restoration Project.
Sussex’s coastal waters once hosted prolific kelp forests. These were home, nursery, and feeding grounds to a range of fish and crustaceans, supporting local fishing communities.
These underwater forests have since been reduced to 4% of their original size, as trawl fishing and other human pressures have ploughed through them.
In 2019 Sussex Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority proposed a bye-law to ban trawling over 300 km2of seabed to help the kelp forests recover. Following the announcement, Blue Marine, Sussex Wildlife Trust, Marine Conservation Society, Big Wave Media and the local community launched the Help our Kelp campaign, successfully raising public support for the byelaw. Even David Attenborough supported the campaign! Thus the byelaw was approved in 2021, opening the door for kelp restoration.
The restoration of the kelp forests was taken on by Blue Marine, the local community and other conservation, government and academic organisations, as part of the Sussex Kelp Restoration Project. In effect, they are monitoring the return in the kelp forests and biodiversity and of the goods and services the ecosystem brings to people, as well as the threats beyond trawling that continue to affect kelp recovery.
After 2 years of trawling ban pockets of kelp and fish have started to be reported across the area, benefitting the local low-impact, small-scale fishing community.
The second project Blue Marine is involved in that we will encounter is the Solent Seascape Project. A consortium of 10 partners across academia, conservation, academia, government agencies and local marine authorities, the Solent Seascape Project aims to restore 30% of the Solent Estuary. A range of environments, some of which designated as marine reserves, make up the Solent seascape. The estuary has and continues to experience strong human pressure, with industrial sites along its shores and high maritime traffic transiting through the port of Southampton.
To restore the Estuary at the seascape scale, Blue Marine and partners will focus on restoring a set area of 4 environments: 8 ha of saltmarsh, 7 ha of seagrass, 4 ha of oysters, and 10 breeding seabird nesting sides. These spaces serve as habitats for marine species, as natural coastal defences, as water cleaners, and/or as climate regulators. As such, their restoration will provide nature-based solutions to issues of coastal erosion, climate change, or dwindling fisheries.
The Third of Blue Marine’s projects we encounter is the Lyme Bay Reserve, where Blue Marine have been active for over a decade. The Reserve is one of the largest marine protected areas (MPA) in the UK and includes over 200 square kilometres protected from dredging and trawling. The Reserve preserves rocky reefs and the largest colony of pink sea fans in the British Isles. Here, Blue Marine’s focus, and success, has been to establish a model of fishery management that combines sustainability of fishing methods and prosperity for local fishermen. Over the years they’ve shown that the protection measures and low-impact fishing practices in placed are creating a 95% increase in reef species and a nearly 400% increase in fish abundance, while making the seabed more resilient to storms.
Further along on the South Coast we reach Plymouth Sound Marine Park.
Blue Marine have identified marine parks as the tool to obtain environmental protection and regeneration and prosperity of deprived coastal communities while increasing public engagement and stewardship of our seas.
Nature parks have long been established on land, but their adoption in the marine space is lagging behind. In 2018, over a 100 people, gathered at a Blue Marine conference, concluded that the waters off Plymouth were highly suitable for designation as a marine park. Thus in 2019, the city of Plymouth declared Plymouth Sound National Marine Park. Blue Marine implemented several measures in the park, such as tagging fishing nets in order to retrieve them if lost, to prevent ghost fishing (the capture of marine animals by drifting lost fishing nets) within the park.
As we turn north into the Celtic, we row past the Severn Estuary. Here, Blue Marine are involved in the European Sea Sturgeon Restoration Project. The sturgeon is an amazing fish. They are born in rivers, then spend their first couple years in the estuary, and then leave to sea, for destinations currently unknown. They first return 10 to 20 years later to the river, measuring 2 meters, to spawn, after which they return to sea. Older specimen can reach 6 meters and live to 100 years! Dams, pollution, overfishing and persecution have led to their demise. The International Union for the Conservation of Nature considers sturgeon to be the most critically endangered group of species on the planet. The UK has 2 species, but they are at high risk of extinction. In 2020 Blue Marine joined the UK Sturgeon Alliance with the Zoological Society of London, the Institute of Fisheries Management, the Severn Rivers Trust and Nature at Work, to prevent their extinction. They keep records of all native sturgeon captures throughout history, are restoring the habitat in the Severn estuary, and will attempt to reintroduce sturgeon directly.
In the Irish Sea Blue Marine is involved in the Wild Oysters Project. Here too Blue Marine is helping to restore the native oyster and the services of coastal defence, water detoxification and habitat provided by the reefs the oysters form. The project is heavily based on engaging local communities, to embrace the project as their own.
As we exit the Irish Sea, and enter the region of Scotland’s western isles, we go past the Isle of Arran. Arran’s inhabitants have long campaigned for protection of their local waters, after residents witnessed how trawling destroyed the colourful, intricate, and fragile marine species and habitats on the seabed. After 13 years of campaigning they obtained protection for a small area of their local waters, designated as a no-take zone (no extraction, a haven for marine species), where hopefully the marine ecosystem can recover. A few years later, a larger area obtained protection, though less stringent. Blue Marine supported research in this region, which has proved the recovery of marine life including shellfish species important to the local fishing fleet, post-protection. This is strong evidence to support further implementation of protected areas at sea.
On the other side of Scotland, offshore of Berwickshire, Blue Marine is trying to designate a new area for legal protection: the Berwickshire Marine Reserve Project. The huge biodiversity seen in these waters is incompatible with continued destruction of the seabed, which, as we’ve seen for the Solent Seascape Project, provides habitats, feeding grounds, nursery grounds, hiding places, or mating grounds for countless marine species and thus contribute to biodiversity, supporting tourism and fisheries. Yet, seabed-destroying bottom-towed fishing gear is not limited at all in the region. Blue Marine supports the Our Seas coalition, organised to reinstate a ban on trawling within 3 miles from shore. This protection existed until the early 80s, and since then inshore waters and fisheries have suffered from the destruction of the seabed. Further to this protection, Blue Marine is pushing for a switch to more sustainable fishing methods as well as more collaborative (across all stakeholders, including small-scale fishermen) management methods.
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