Who is blocking Highly Protected Marine Areas?

Dr Jean-Luc Solandt
Principal Specialist, Marine Protected Areas, Marine Conservation Society
01989 561594 / 07793 118387   www.mcsuk.org

Dr Sue Gubbay, Independent Marine Consultant

Dr Bob Earll, Communications and Management for Sustainability,

Dear Mr Gove,

This blog is prompted by the eventual release of a research assessment of HPMAs by Cefas a document that prompts a host of question for all the wrong reasons.

The idea behind Highly Protected Marine Areas is really simple

They are ‘no-take’ zones. In other words, no extraction of living or non-living resources. By doing this the species and habitats are allowed to recover from human activities. It is widely understood that what the recovery will lead to in terms of species changes is difficult to predict. HPMAs can act as control areas and science has key role in understanding the recovery process.

Speaking to members of the public, you will probably find, as we have, that this is what many think is already happening or expect to be happening in the various types of marine protected area around the UK.

The debate has been going on for decades

MCS, other environmental NGOs, and many eminent scientists have been trying to get Highly Protected Marine Areas in the UK for four decades. We have presented evidence of the benefits from elsewhere, gained considerable public support (MCS campaigns) and keep adding to this every year.

There is a wealth of evidence of the benefits

Scientific reports, review papers, research projects and a fundamental premise of science hold that control areas are necessary to truly gauge the effects of human activities has been largely ignored in the seas around the UK.

In light of all of this, the case for yet another review report (Commissioned by Defra from Cefas) on the effects of Highly Protected Marine Areas was mystifying (Ballantine, 2014). There are also now many examples from all over the world of HPMAs and these were summarised by PISCO http://www.piscoweb.org/marine-protected-areas. Yet still no movement in UK seas. There is also lots of evidence of benefits of such an approach from the fisheries sector, so often cited as opponents of the concept, who use closed areas as a tool to enhance fish stocks.

Numerous opportunities have been missed

From the Marine Reserves provisions in the 1981 Wildlife & Countryside Act through to Marine Conservation Zones in the 2009 Marine and Coastal Access Act, there have been opportunities to establish at least some Highly Protected Marine Areas in UK waters. Seemingly acceptable for the “Blue Belt” of UK overseas territories, in our own territorial waters three small English sites are all that the government seems willing to allow, covering less than 20km². HPMAs were last considered during the 2010-2011 MCZ stakeholder process for 65 ‘reference areas’. Not one site is in place from that long list.

The Cefas report is not a scientific document

Cefas is an evidenced based organisation that provides scientific advice to Government on a whole host of issues. We believe that left to their own devices they could have produced a perfectly reasonable report on HPMAs in short order as there was a mountain of evidence on the way HPMAs operate. We highlight the below some of the problems with the full report:

1. The main report focuses on legalities and delivery more than science. We therefore question the role of Cefas as a scientific body regards the contents of this report.
2. A cost benefit analysis had been undertaken for this project. It is not published. We understand that it came out with very favourable benefits from HPMAs.
3. It doesn’t remark on the role of HPMAs to either or protect/maintain intact marine ecosystems or recover degraded ones. This is a vital distinction for their use in healthy seas (e.g. some UK OTs), compared to heavily used seas (e.g. UK continental shelf).
4. It fails to set out the detailed basic dynamics of the recovery of seabeds or mobile species (e.g. fish and crustacea) after they have been protected. This is hidden in appendix 4. Why?
5. The references in the main report to HPMAs are thin to say the least – why are these hidden in the appendices?

It might be naïve to think that Cefas should simply have reviewed the science and published the report and then left Defra to do the policy work. There is nothing wrong with this distinction, and it is well understood, but producing a report that is so obviously political undermines the scientific integrity of Cefas and the way it operates.

The role (dead hand of) Defra in Blocking progress

1. Chronology of the report

Why has the report taken about 3 years to come out since the work was done? This is evident from the report production timetable. This is a classic ploy of Government wanting to kick an issue into the long grass. To see it MCS had to start the process of a formal Freedom of Information (FoI) request to Defra. The report involved the expenditure of public money so this reticence seems hardly consistent with the matter of transparency that ministers would like to claim. 

2. Clumsy shoe-horning policy into the report

A workshop was held in Defra (Nobel House) in 2014 to discuss stakeholder opinion on HPMA science and additional socio-economic impacts. Nevertheless, clearly a move to say ‘stakeholders were consulted’. What was most apparent at the meeting was the clumsy nature of Defra (not Cefas) trying to shoe-horn the HPMA ‘designation’ into the toolbox of ‘Conservation Objectives’ for existing MCZs.

Here is the language used: HPMAs are MPAs where conservation objectives require that the site and its component features and processes are maintained at the upper end of favourable condition. This isn’t the role of Cefas. Surely, they do science, not conservation objectives / policy or politics? When is such a measure ‘required’? What is the ‘upper end’? This fails fundamentally to understand the simple idea of how HPMAs work. Is this a deliberate policy decision to derail the HPMA objective – of recovering all parts of the ecosystem? Perhaps so.

3. The conservation objective is impossible to prove

It appears that the scientists and NE/JNCC will need to assure Defra exactly what such an intervention will bring in order to justify their use – in every part of the sea. This of course misses the point of HPMAs completely, because the direction of recovery cannot be accurately predicted. This has been known since the pioneering work of Bill Ballantine in the 1970s (Ballantine, 2014). We need HPMAs to measure recovery, whatever that trajectory may be. 

Conclusion

Given your agenda of trying to improve the marine environment, and seeing the recovery potential for our seas, you must surely see the value of such areas? Until such time as you grasp the nettle, and take on this approach, there will always be the sort of dull discussions at your round-table held on April 12^th. If you want further evidence of the benefits rather than commissioning more reports, it is time to allow some areas to be set up. Not just in faraway Chagos or Antarctica, but here around our shores.

References

http://www.piscoweb.org/sites/default/files/SMR_EU_LowRes.pdf  Second Edition: Europe – PISCO | Partnership for the Interdisciplinary Science of the Ocean www.piscoweb.org

Fifty years on: Lessons from marine reserves in New Zealand and principles for a worldwide network (Ballantine, W. J. (2014)

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0006320714000160

Appendix:

A recent chronology from the UK

Recent steps leading to the commissioning of the Cefas report include:

• 2003 – Lundy Island is set up as England’s first HPMA (3.3.km²).
• 2008 – Lamlash Bay is the second HPMA, that took 13 years of campaigning to gain protection (2.6km²).
• 2009 – The Marine and Coastal Access Act makes provision for Marine Conservation Zones.
• 2010 – The Flamborough Head NTZ is established, the UKs third such site (0.7km²).
• Between 2006 and 2008, the Marine Conservation Society ran a campaign with the UK aquaria to educate and inform the public visiting their facilities to support Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs). We received 100,000 signatures of support for the measure in a little over a year. We also got the Co-operative Group involved and received a further 400,000 messages of support (with about 40,000 against) for marine reserves.
• In 2010-2012, MCS ran the ‘Your Seas Your Voice’ campaign and received overwhelming support for about 70 HPMAs in specific locations around the seas – all coastal, small, and based on Seasearch surveys. This demonstrated a good deal of support for such a measure just before the MCZ stakeholder process. The scientific community was pretty much supportive of their role for temperate biodiversity biomass and diversity back then (http://www.int-res.com/abstracts/meps/v367/p49-56/)
• In 2010-2011, UK government supported a stakeholder process that recommended 127 MCZs including an overlapping number of about 65 potential ‘reference’ (or ‘highly protected’) sites.
• None of these were ever designated. Big or small, well-supported or not, from southwest to northeast – nowhere, not one.
• 2014   Partly as a result of this failed attempt to implement a strategic network of HPMA sites, the Government’s marine research agency Cefas were required/asked/commissioned to do a further assessment of the scientific results of HPMAs in temperate seas in 2014 by Defra.
• An intertidal no-take HPMA was set up in collaboration between Kent and Essex IFCA within a private fishery in about 2014 at the Medway MCZ (12.1 km²). It is proving difficult to find the legislative order for this. But there is a link: https://www.kentandessex-ifca.gov.uk/im-interested-in/mpas/medway-nursery-area/