The future of Scotland’s sealife depends on a planning system for the sea, according to a committee of MSPs. In a letter sent to Paul Wheelhouse, Minister for Environment and Climate Change on Monday, MSPs on the Rural Affairs, Climate Change and Environment Committee stressed the importance of a coordinated National Marine Plan to ensure the sustainability of offshore development.
The comments on the Scottish Government’s biodiversity strategy, have been welcomed by the members of Scottish Environment LINK, who warn that Scotland’s marine life is under increasing pressure from a range of threats, such as climate change and industrial activities at sea. Scotland’s Marine Atlas, a compendium of scientific knowledge about Scottish seas, documents the worrying declines of many marine species and habitats. (more…)
Orcas visiting the coastal waters of Fair Isle in June 2011
The people of Fair Isle are calling for better protection of their local marine environment. Nick Riddiford, chair of the Fair Isle Marine Environment and Tourism Initiative explains why a Marine Protected Area would help safeguard their sea, and their community.
For the last 24 years the Fair Isle community, concerned at steady and unremitting damage to its marine environment, has been active in trying to reverse the process.
This has culminated in a proposal to the Scottish Government for a Marine Protected Area for Fair Isle waters, submitted to the Government’s Marine Scotland in December 2011. The proposal has the backing of every person on the isle, as a healthy marine environment underpins the social and economic well-being of the isle.
The isle has been occupied continuously for at least 2000 years and archaeological investigations have demonstrated that there were people living here 5000 years ago. Fair Isle is 42 kilometres (28 miles) from the nearest land in any direction. A community would not have survived without using its resources in a sustainable manner. It was not in a position to use up its resources, then go and exploit resources elsewhere. That remains the situation today.
The seas around Fair Isle have always played an essential part in community life and continue to do so. We recognise that safeguarding the resource also safeguards the future of our island. That resource now includes the public, drawn to the isle by its marvellous wildlife, scenery and maritime culture. We owe it to them. We owe it to our children.
FIMETI, perceiving no action from other bodies, set out to provide a catalyst for urgent progress towards proper, sustainable management of the Fair Isle marine resource. It has engaged in a plethora of activities, including an international sustainable resource management project, the production of a policy report Safeguarding Our Heritage – the Fair Isle Marine Resource, participation in the Scottish Government’s Scottish Sustainable Marine Environment Initiative (SSMEI Shetland pilot study) and much more. But it is yet to achieve its primary aim of bringing a sustainable management programme to a resource which the community sees as crucial to its long-term development and well-being.
Despite this lack of achievement, the community identifies a new opportunity with the prospect of a network of Marine Protected Areas in Scottish waters. Fair Isle’s seas remain rich, despite a marine environment subject to continued enormous pressure. In addition, the isle has a series of facilities which would make it an ideal site for a Demonstration and Research MPA. In this way it could act as a pilot site for testing appropriate management measures and provide a model for coastal communities throughout Scotland.
An MPA would also meet the Scottish Government’s obligation within the Council of Europe. Fair Isle has held the Council of Europe Diploma since 1985, one of just two sites in Scotland. In 2010 a condition was signed by the Council’s Committee of Ministers – representing all 47 participating countries – that the Scottish and UK Government’s should use their powers to establish a protected marine area for Fair Isle. If this is not done, Fair Isle will lose its Diploma and Scotland one of its only two sites.
FIMETI remains the community’s voice on the issue. Just about everyone, from school children upwards have been involved in FIMETI activities over the years, including the preparation of the MPA proposal. This is clearly demonstrated in a series of newsletters entitled Making Waves. The latest Making Waves (Issue 10) has just been published. It has been described as “a good read” but also displays the range of maritime activities, and qualities, which makes Fair Isle such a special place. We invite you to read it here
A campaign like Hugh’s Fish Fight can be avoided in Scotland if Scottish Ministers keep their commitment to strong implementation of the Marine Act, say members of Scottish Environment LINK.
Major concerns about marine protection in England and Wales have been raised by Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall’s ‘Fish Fight’ campaign after initial plans for 127 marine conservation zones were later cut to just 31 sites for public consultation. The UK Government slashed the proposals following arguments over science, sparking around 2,000 people to take part in a rally at Westminster earlier this week calling on the UK Government to be more ambitious.
But the scientific case for an equivalent network of marine protected areas (MPAs) in Scotland is strong enough to consult on all 33 Scottish sites (more…)
Sea trout, like many species in Scotland’s waters, are in decline. And not just a gradual decline; in some regions they are on a disturbing trajectory towards local extinction, having fallen by over 75% in 20 years [1]. Government advice infers from the latest sea trout rod catch statistics that spawning levels of this fish are at historically low levels.[2] This is bad news for obvious ecological reasons. It is also bad news for very interconnected economic ones.
Sea trout are part of the natural, social and economic fabric of Scotland. For millennia a part of our diet, Scottish sea trout and salmon now attract anglers from all over the world.
A study in 2004 revealed that recreational anglers for sea trout and salmon spent a total of £73m in Scotland annually[3]. This is undoubtedly a substantial annual contribution to the coastal and rural areas of Scotland’s economy. A 1999 study suggested indirect and induced impacts of angling on the Western Isles economy amounted to £5.6m and accounted for 260 full time equivalent jobs – 2.7% of the working population[4].
These economic studies make clear that healthy stocks of sea trout and salmon are vital to the rural economy. And widespread declines in sea trout mean these financial benefits to local communities are under threat. The reasons for the declines vary throughout the country, but in the west where the issue is most pressing, they are mostly linked to the spread of disease. And again one thing is obvious; we need to act. Much work is already being done to conserve sea trout in river systems, but there is more we can do to protect sea trout in the marine environment.
What can we do about this? Like salmon, sea trout move from freshwater into salt-water, but rather than migrating across the Atlantic like their salmonid cousins, sea trout spend the marine stage of their life cycle in inshore and estuarial waters. It is here that they are particularly vulnerable and where they are known to pick up lethal infections of sealice.
It is for this reason that Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) can help to protect sea trout. Sea trout are classed as a ‘Priority Marine Feature’ under new Scottish marine legislation and although they are not being used as one of the features to drive the selection of MPA sites, it is essential that once the sites have been identified, some must be managed specifically for the protection of sea trout and other migratory fish such as salmon. MPAs could also be managed to enhance the marine habitats and food sources which sea trout rely upon, for example by protecting eelgrass beds, maerl beds and sandeels.
Alongside other conservation measures, MPAs therefore could provide a vital boost to migratory fish in Scotland’s marine and freshwater environment. This of course is an end in itself – studies show that people are glad simply to know that fish live in our rivers[5]. But the potential trickle-down effects in the form of secure – and possibly increased – revenue from recreational game fishing is just one demonstration of how the health of our economy is underpinned by environmental health.
Despite such a compelling case, these nature conservation Marine Protected Areas are not yet in place. At the end of 2012, the Scottish Government received advice from SNH and JNCC on 33 MPA proposals and four MPA search locations in Scottish waters. Members of the Save Scottish Seas campaign remain seriously concerned about gaps in the network and its adequacy for the protection of certain important marine species and habitats. The campaign is therefore committed to helping make the MPA network as well-managed and ecologically coherent as possible.
This summer there is a public consultation about the proposed network. Find out how you can show your support for a strong, well-managed and ecologically-coherent network of Marine Protected Areas by visiting the Save Scottish Seas ‘get involved’ page…
[Updated from original article on 23rd August, 2013]
Independent councillor for Lerwick South on Shetland Islands Council Dr Jonathan Wills argues that current plans risk creating conservation ‘islands’ in a sea of escalating industrial development…
The crew of an alien spacecraft, entering the Earth’s atmosphere over the north of Scotland, could not fail to be impressed by the beauty of Shetland, Orkney and the Hebrides.
Being even more sophisticated and better equipped than most civil servants, our visitors from Planet Dork would immediately recognise that these islands are part of an intricate, varied and very fragile ecosystem. Sensors on board the spaceship, as it skimmed southwestwards from Muckle Flugga to the Mull of Kintyre, would also notice that the most biodiverse and productive part of the ecosystem lies under the sea (something the seers of St Andrews House have not yet registered). The Mekon piloting the ship would probably clap a preservation order on the lot, for aesthetic if not economic reasons, before flying on to have his wicked way with the cities of the plains between the Ochils and the Pentlands.
The Mekon? That dates me. He was the sinister alien in the Eagle comic’s ‘Dan Dare’ strip in the 1950s. Sometimes I feel the Mekon’s already taken us over. It’s more than five years now since the new Scottish Government decided not to go ahead with an imaginative plan to create Scotland’s first National Marine Parks, apparently because some rich fishermen didn’t like the idea (and also, perhaps, because the Lab-Lib Coalition at Holyrood had promoted it). Instead, we’ve had a series of Special Areas of Conservation and Marine Protected Areas. These are all very well and worthy but, when I recently re-read the papers I wrote in 2006, advocating the proposed Shetland National Marine Park, I found that the argument for much larger protected areas was stronger than ever.
The basic problem, underwater, is that we’re creating conservation ‘islands’ in a sea of escalating industrial development, just as we’ve been doing on land for such a long time. Rather than saying “this place is beautiful, special and we must preserve as much of it as possible if we want to have thriving fishing and tourist industries for our grandchildren”, the attitude seems to be “if you want to keep some little bits pristine then you’ll have to make the case for it and ensure the fishermen, the fossil fuel industry and the cable layers are kept happy”. This partial, piecemeal approach to marine planning repeats the errors of the terrestrial planning industry which (and I quote a planning officer whom I recently questioned about the new Planning Act) always has a “presumption in favour of development.”
Piecemeal conservation isn’t conservation at all, because it fails to recognise that habitats such as the luxuriant Shetland kelp forest and its amazing caves, encrusted by a riot of corals and creatures that rival the Great Barrier Reef, are part of a vast ecosystem fringing western Europe from southwest Ireland to northern Norway. Offshore, where it’s too deep and dark for seaweed, there’s even more biodiversity, as the oil industry’s own surveys have revealed over the past 40 years. If you break it up into isolated bits you’re likely to damage it by far more than the sum of the fragmented pieces.
Of course we need somewhere for the fishermen to fish, but it would be in their own interests if we kept heavy trawls and scallop dredgers out of the 12 mile limit. Of course we need undersea cables, not least to develop wind, wave and tidal power on the islands, and the cable tracks would add to the area of no-catch zones where fish stocks might recover after a century of over-fishing, without the risk of pollution that comes with oil platforms and floating production and storage vessels. Until renewables are far more developed than they are today, we also need oil and gas, but at what cost to the tiny animals that live on and under the seabed, and which in turn are food for commercial fish?
It’s the developers who should have to argue the case for making a hole in the blanket of conservation, a blanket that ought to be in place already, if we’re serious about “sustainability”. At this rate there’ll soon be more holes than blanket. If you doubt this, look at a chart of the platforms, pipelines, submarine cables and heavily trawled fishing grounds in the North Sea. It looks like a painting of a rat’s nest by Jackson Pollock.
The ‘presumption in favour of development’ is epitomised by what’s happening in the final phase of the fossil fuel industry on the “Atlantic Frontier”. As I write this, I’ve been asked to comment on the Westminster Government’s draft oilspill contingency plans[1] for the west Shetland oil and gas fields, in water almost as deep as, and considerably stormier than, the Gulf of Mexico. The LibberTories say it’s acceptable that the only insurance cover for a Macondo-style blowout west of Shetland is a voluntary scheme run by the companies, with a kitty of just $250m. That wouldn’t pay the flights and hotel bills of the workers who’d have to wipe clean Shetland’s 1600-mile coastline of beaches, cliffs, caves and kelp forests, if and when the big one happened. But it’s OK, folks – the plan says if the cost were more than $250m ($2.5bn is not unlikely) then the victims of pollution would be able to sue the miscreants in the courts. Oh, goody! If the Amoco Cadiz and Exxon Valdez cases are anything to go by, it could take 10 to 20 years to settle, by which time some of the claimants will, conveniently, be dead. There oughta be a law.
(This article was submitted end of November 2012).
Marine wildlife photographer Paul Kay explains why he sees underwater photography as an important tool for helping to protect and recover Scotland’s seas.
I contributed images to the Save Scottish Seas campaign, because I believe passionately that we have got to do everything in our power to safeguard our marine wildlife for future generations.
In just 30 years – the length of time I have been taking underwater photographs – I have been privileged to explore many parts of Scotland’s incredibly diverse seas, from sheltered sea-lochs to the most exposed islands and stacs around St Kilda. In that time I have seen many amazingly beautiful creatures and spectacular underwater scenery. Despite Scottish seas being cold they have areas of world-class marine life and habitats.
Paul Kay supplied this photograph of Nephrops norvegicus beside its burrow for the Save Scottish Seas campaign.
Sadly I have also seen areas which have been damaged or used badly too. It is essential to appreciate that, whilst out of sight, our marine environment is an extremely important part of our world. This is not just because I am environmentally aware, but because we depend on it for food – and many do so for their livelihoods.
Paul Kay supplied this photograph of Sea loch anenomes and brittlestars for the Save Scottish Seas campaign.
I think photos are an important tool for showing what goes on under the surface. Just as we would never know what the surface of the moon looks like unless we’d been there and taken photographic evidence, our seabeds are just as mysterious to us without pictures to illuminate their wonder. Although it is sometimes difficult for me to imagine, the vast majority of people will probably never dive beneath the surface of Scotland’s rich seas and will never see them firsthand. But whether you visit a kelp forest or a local wood, I think we all collectively take tremendous strength from simply knowing that our seas are healthy and rich in sealife.
Marine Protected Areas are one step towards helping secure a future for our seas, increasingly under pressure from human activities, in a way that balances everyone’s interests for the long-term.
Paul Kay is based on the North Wales coast and undertakes photographic work throughout the UK and beyond. www.paulkayphotography.co.uk
WDC has handed over a huge 36,736 signatures from members of the public to Richard Lochhead, Scotland’s Cabinet Secretary for Rural Affairs and Environment, asking the Scottish Government to include whales and dolphins in Scotland’s new marine protected area network.
The handover of the signatures at the Scottish parliament by WDC’s head of policy in Scotland, Sarah Dolman, leading international minke whale expert, Dr Mike Tetley, and Ruaraigh the inflatable Risso’s dolphin was made just a day before Mr Lochhead made a public announcement regarding the Government’s plans for its marine protected area (MPA) network.
In February, WDC launched its campaign to ensure whales and dolphins are included in the list of species to be protected when the Scottish Government makes its decision on which areas of Scottish seas will be protected. In just a few months, WDC has received nearly 37,000 responses from concerned members of the public (including over 100 Scottish and international marine scientists) demonstrating the extreme level of feeling on the matter.
“We have been overwhelmed by the level of support received from the Scottish and international public on this matter and the sheer numbers speak for themselves. We are very pleased that Mr Lochhead agreed to meet with us to receive the signatures and so acknowledge the passionate public feeling on this matter”, said Sarah Dolman.
“Scotland’s seas are truly outstanding, and the Scottish MPA network is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to protect and showcase our amazing whales and dolphins along with other nationally important species and habitats.
“We know that the Scottish Government has the scientific data needed to include whales and dolphins in the MPA network – we helped supply it! They now have to choose whether to provide whales and dolphins with protected areas or to continue to neglect some of Scotland’s most iconic and precious marine species.”
The Scottish Government’s report to the Scottish Parliament contains no commitments to set up MPAs for the priority Scottish species identified, including minke whales, Risso’s dolphins, white beaked dolphins and basking sharks.
You can share this poster on Facebook at www.facebook.com/SaveScottishSeas (Picture by Paul Kay)
‘Protect your bottom line.’ It’s one of the oldest tenets in business; an essential reminder to look after what’s most important. If you don’t look after your bottom line, you might as well forget the rest. It’s a piece of financial wisdom that is extremely relevant to the health of our marine environment. And if we take it seriously, we all stand to gain – from fishermen, restauranteurs and shoreside B&Bs to society at large which benefits from vibrant, resilient coastal communities. So what is that vital ‘bottom line’ of our seas? It is, of course, the seabed.
The seabed performs fundamental and varied roles in sustaining marine life. In dark, deep waters, it recycles the nutrients that flow through the complex ocean food web. In shallower, inshore waters it also provides vital habitats for the spectacular range of organisms that Scotland’s seas are famous for.
On land, if we don’t have soil, we don’t have the complex communities of plants, insects, birds and mammals. Our seabed communities are no different. Below Scotland’s waves, our rocky reefs are home to many thousands of species such as the sea loch anenomes and brittlestars on this poster. The sands, gravels and muds beyond our reefs host equally diverse life. Our entire seabed is a complex living, breathing ecosystem which supports fragile reefs, rich sediments and kelp forests that in turn provide vital nursery and feeding grounds for the larger commercial fish and shellfish.
And so it doesn’t take a marine scientist to work out that if we don’t have a healthy seabed, we don’t have a fully productive sea. And that means, conversely, that many of the economic benefits provided by the sea rely upon us looking after our seabed.
Now for a few worrying facts:
It is highly likely that there are no ‘pristine’ marine ecosystems left on Scotland’s continental shelf and the deepwater habitats beyond are declining
Human exploitation across swathes of Scotland’s seabed is a matter of concern. Trawling and dredging can damage fragile habitats such as maerl beds, sponge fields, flameshell beds and fields of tall seapen. And relatively modern fishing practices such as bottom trawling using rock-hopping gear now impact upon previously unreachable rocky habitats
Maerl grows at 1mm per year. A complex maerl bed – which acts as a nursery for juvenile fish – can take several decades to develop.
So what role could Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) play in improving this picture and reversing some of the damage we have already done? MPAs are basically a tool for working out what we need to protect and recover in our seas so that we can secure an ‘ecologically coherent network’ for future generations. MPAs offer a way of doing this. It is a more strategic approach to marine management and relies upon us all sharing our knowledge for the common good – the health of our seas.
This process is now under way and we cannot get it wrong. If we properly protect and recover our seabed, we will be investing in the long-term health of our seas and the many communities and local economies that depend on it. That would be good news for divers, anglers, fishermen and … everyone.
The seabed truly is the marine bottom line.
The Marine Conservation Society, supported by it’s many Seasearch trained divers, spends a lot of time recording seabed species and habitats and using that information to advocate for their protection. In the Scottish MPA proposals put before the Scottish Parliament on 14th December, MCS co-ordinated Seasearch information supported the case for greater inclusion of sea lochs and augmented other proposals such as for the Small Isles and south Arran. As a member of the Save Scottish Seas campaign, it is a strong proponent of MPAs. You can pledge your support for a robust network of MPAs for Scotland on the MCS website.
Plans announced today (14th December 2012) for 33 nature conservation Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) have been welcomed by a coalition of Scotland’s environmental groups as an important step towards the much-needed recovery of Scotland’s seas.
Scottish Environment LINK’s marine taskforce contends that a network of Marine Protected Areas cannot afford to simply protect what’s left in Scotland’s seas, otherwise the marine environment will continue to decline. The eight organisations who collectively represent 460,000 memberships, believe that a network of MPAs must actively help recover the seabed and the marine life it supports, implementing the ambition of national legislation passed by the Scottish Parliament over two years ago. (more…)
Picking up on recent research that looks at the economics of setting up a network of Scottish MPAs, Chris Williams of new economic foundation (nef) explains why the valuation of ‘ecosystems services’ are rising up everyone’s agenda.
One must acknowledge the intrinsic value of nature. It is essential. It is priceless. However, in order to inform policy decisions it is useful to understand how we benefit from nature (i.e. the services they provide) and what the cost for protecting it is, we need to have an approach that can value the environment in a way that reflects this immense and in many senses unquantifiable value.
Measuring those benefits, in order to make the case for conserving those areas which provide the highest benefits to human populations, or those which are of most importance in terms of biodiversity or most under threat, is a key step in making the case for their protection.
Looking at valuing the marine environment is an important aspect of work that NGOs working in the world of marine conservation and fisheries are concerned with. Although it is completely clear that ‘pricing the priceless’ is impossible and whatever values are calculated will inevitably be an underestimation of the true value of nature, within the confines of our current system, it is part of the necessary toolkit to inform decisions. For example, in Scotland a study has just been released, which shows that the benefits of a network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) in Scotland range from £6.3 – £10 Billion over the next 20 years.
The estimated benefits include those that we benefit from directly by exploiting the environment (either consumptive goods e.g. fisheries, or non-consumptive ones e.g. wildlife viewing) and indirect benefits that are derived from ecosystem functions that give rise to a ‘socially relevant endpoint’ (e.g. climate regulation from carbon sequestration in plants). Economists also like to talk about the ‘option’ value associated with an individual’s willingness to pay to protect the possibility of using a natural resource in the future. Then there are the non-use values such as the value an individual places on ensuring the availability of a natural resource to future generations, or the value placed on simply knowing that a natural resource is there.
The sea is a provider of food and materials for building (aggregates); it regulates our climate and produces oxygen and acts as a sink for carbon dioxide; and also provides other cultural benefits such as tourism and recreation. Some of these have clear market prices, some do not.
‘Rising on the agenda’ All of these benefits have been quantified (where possible) in the study and these considerations and approaches are now rising on the agenda when it comes to the marine environment.
With so much to be gained from conserving the marine environment and ensuring its use is sustainable, can we really afford not to? This brings us to why long-term thinking is problematic under the current paradigm and favours short-termism (myopia) over true sustainability:
Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) is currently the main framework used to evaluate public spending decisions, mainly in the form of Impact Assessments . The importance of CBA in evaluating all costs and benefits throughout society is central to decision making in the UK . The central importance of discounting and discount rates has been discussed many times and is a key issue which makes conservation seem like a bad investment: the benefits we derive from nature conservation often take a long period of time to materialise, especially in degraded environments. So the myopia resulting from economic decision making and ‘discounting the future’ means conservation does not look like it is worth investing in. The current discount rate we use (3.5% over 20 years ) does not reflect the reality that beyond the 20 year time horizon, the benefits may be even greater from having conservation areas within the marine environment. Is a source of protein around from our seas really going to be worth half of what it is now to people in the year 2032 (see graph below) or less than a third by 2050?
Graph 1: A discount rate of 3.5% from 2012 – 2050
The discussion about how to ‘’value nature’’ has been on-going for years. In its widest sense, the environmental, social and economic benefits of conserving natural habitats and ecosystems along with the species that inhabit them (our ‘natural capital’) are measured with regards to the services they provide to humans (‘ecosystem services’). Without this natural capital being in a functioning and healthy state, our long-term survival becomes difficult or impossible. The often-used but unhelpful utilitarian perspective (only looking at what goods and services we get out of nature) can only tell us part of the story.
So in order to specifically understand the benefits that Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) provide we ran a workshop in September as part of the Marine Socio Economics Project , a 30 month project to strengthen the socio-economic skills and capacity of marine NGOs. The five partners (WWF, MCS, Wildlife Trusts and the RSPB) sent key staff working on MPAs to Bristol, where a two day workshop presented the way that the benefits of MPAs (which include economic, social and environmental benefits) can be demonstrated, measured and used to inform government decision-making. The main case study discussed at the workshop was the English Marine Conservation Zone project (MCZ – a type of MPA), but work of this nature is going on throughout Britain, Europe and Globally, as the report from Scottish Environment LINK shows.
There is an inherent difficulty in demonstrating the value of ecosystem services and benefits to humans as a result of the designation of an MPA, but there is no doubt that our current economic approach is jeopardising food security, jobs, sustainability and the long-term future for people and the sea which surrounds us.
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