U.K. Sea Habitat At Risk, Needs Protection, WWF Says

January 18, 2005

Release from: Bloomberg

The U.K.'s marine environment requires legal protection to halt a decline in many of its species and habitats, the WWF said.

All six of the U.K. sea habitats studied by its scientists were being destroyed, the Gland, Switzerland-based conservation group said in a report. Of 10 species assessed, only three had stable population levels.

"The plight of the U.K. seas has worsened" since the WWF conducted its first Marine Health Check five years ago, Jan Brown, a WWF senior marine policy officer based in Godalming, southeast England, said in an e-mailed statement. "Our marine heritage is in a shameful state for a maritime nation."

Concern that fish stocks are dwindling has pushed marine conservation onto the U.K. political agenda. Prime Minister Tony Blair's Strategy Unit estimates that half of the fish landed by the U.K. fleet come from stocks that are either unsustainable or borderline. Fisheries Minister Ben Bradshaw last month rejected a call by the U.K.'s Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution to close 30 percent of the nation's coastal waters to commercial fishing.

"The government accepts that more needs to be done to better manage and protect our seas," the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said in an e-mailed statement. To this end, Defra said it will introduce into the next Parliament a Marine Bill, and will publish its own "State of the Seas" report "in the next couple of months."

No Skate Found

The WWF said it had already drafted its own "marine bill" to protect U.K. sea life, including "No-Take Zones" that prohibit "extractive activities" either seasonally or permanently. "There is evidence that a No-Take Zone can deliver fish-stock recovery not just within that area but also in neighboring zones," the group said.

While declines of Atlantic cod and salmon have received publicity, the WWF study found other species might be at graver risk. "The common skate is so scarce that recent surveys to assess their status didn't find a single one," it said.

Only the basking shark, long-snouted seahorse and pink sea fan -- a type of coral -- were sufficiently plentiful in U.K. waters. The Harbor porpoise, leatherback turtle, Atlantic salmon, Atlantic cod, common skate, fan mussel and native oyster were all at risk.

Most of the damage to habitats came from bottom trawling, dredging and sand and gravel extraction. Saltmarshes, seagrass beds, horse mussel beds, deep-water mud habitats and deep-water reefs and maerl beds -- made up of free-living calcified seaweed -- were being destroyed, according to the WWF.

In November, the European Union, Russia, Norway and Iceland agreed to prohibit some trawling along the northeast Atlantic ocean floor to preserve vulnerable habitats. The U.K. had already banned bottom trawling in the Darwin Mounds, an area of deep- water coral reefs to the northwest of Scotland.

The WWF said Blair's government lacked a strategy for managing the seas around the U.K.'s 20,000 kilometers (12,400 miles) of coastline. Decision-making and jurisdiction was shared by "numerous government departments, agencies and authorities," which led to "confusing, fragmented, often conflicting policies and a costly, bureaucratic system of governance that does not effectively promote the health or economic potential of our seas."

A U.K. "Marine Act" offered the "only real solution to the crisis in our seas," WWF's Brown said.