EU countries are committed to achieving Good Environmental Status (GES) in their marine waters under the EU Marine Strategy Framework Directive. The UK is following a parallel process with the same commitment under the UK Marine Strategy, which also has the objective of Good Environmental Status. OSPAR is coordinating this work at the regional scale, and delivered an Intermediate Assessment in 2017 (IA2017).

A new paper presents a first attempt to actually assess the biodiversity status of the indicators used in IA2017. Using a simple, semi-quantitative approach to evaluate holistically the state of Northeast Atlantic biodiversity.

The authors found that, overall, the state of marine biodiversity in the Northeast Atlantic is not good. 25% of indicators were in poor status, 56% of indicators were in uncertain status, and only 18% were in good status.

Bright spots include recent signs of recovery in some fish and marine bird communities and recovery in harbour and grey seal populations and the condition of coastal benthic communities in some regions.

The analysis revealed widespread degradation in marine ecosystems and biodiversity, particularly for marine birds and coastal bottlenose dolphins, as well as for benthic habitats and fish in some regions. The poor biodiversity status of these ecosystem components is likely the result of cumulative effects of human activities, such as habitat destruction or disturbance, overexploitation, eutrophication, the introduction of non-indigenous species, and climate change.

The news piece/blog by the lead author, Dr Abigail McQuatters-Gollop, can be read here. The peer reviewed journal paper can be read here.