The North Sea ROCKS!
Here's an update from Richard Page, one of our oceans campaigners, on what's going on in the North Sea.
This week work to protect the Sylt Outer Reef resumed so that now over 100 stones have been strategically placed in order to deter what is nominally a protected area from bottom trawling and sand and gravel extraction.
The method is one which has been effectively used to protect important seagrass habitats in the Mediterranean from being trawled. Our goal is to establish a fully-protected marine reserve that will deliver real conservation and fisheries benefits and do what the German Government has failed to do - despite its international commitments to stop biodiversity loss and create a network of marine protected areas including marine reserves.
Greenpeace first published its proposal for a network of marine reserves covering 40% of the North and Baltic Seas in 2004 and has been actively campaigning for the establishment of such a network ever since. During that time scientific and political support for marine reserves has grown globally as exemplified by the establishment of large areas such as the Hawaiian National Monument (362,000 km2 )and Phoenix Islands Protected Area (410,500 km2). In Europe progress has been slow despite the support of marine biologists. In the UK the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution recommended that 30% of UK waters should be closed to fishing.
Marine reserves are by far the most powerful at our disposal for restoring the former productivity of our oceans. The North Sea, like most of the oceans, has, through overfishing and other human activities, been emptied of marine life so that what remains is a mere shadow of what was once there.
It is interesting to note that the inherent destructiveness of bottom trawling was already the subject of hot debate among fishermen following the introduction of steam trawlers in the late nineteenth century. In his book the Unnatural History of the Sea, Callum Roberts, gives an account of a Royal Commission of Inquiry hearing on the effects of trawling. Roberts quotes extensively from the testimony provided by small-scale fishermen complaining at how the trawlers were destroying vulnerable habitats and about the quantities of bycatch taken by this destructive fishing method. At that time much of the southern North Sea was in fact covered with a hard crust of oysters and other invertebrates, as is illustrated in the coloured maps of the Piscatorial Atlas of the North Sea, English and St Georges Channels published in 1883. Fishermen knew then that this living substrate was vital for many of the fish species that provided them with a living, but unfortunately for us all, the trawlermen held more sway.
Luckily for us the seas have enormous restorative powers and if left alone to assume a more natural state, as is made possible by establishing networks of marine reserves, marine life can rebuild and flourish.
The Sylt Outer Reef is an oasis of sea life in the southern North Sea but it is being plundered by fishermen and sand and gravel extraction. By establishing a fully protected marine reserve in the area we can safeguard the harbour porpoise and other creatures that live there and help rebuild the life that was once there. If wisdom prevails and a network of marine reserves is established then, given time, we may once again see the whole of the North Sea heaving with life as it did a couple of hundred years ago.
Image © Guenther Menn/Greenpeace
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