A network of marine reserves, that cover at least 30 per cent of the North Sea, is needed to help rebuild populations of many fish species, and protect the habitats upon which these, and other species depend says WWF-UK in a new report published today.
There is an urgent need for protected areas to provide refuges for commercially important species such as cod, haddock and plaice. The organisation states that existing fisheries management regimes have failed to provide sufficient protection for these vulnerable species, leading to a reduction in their numbers by as much as 90 per cent since 1990.
In the report, 'A Return to Abundance: A Case for Marine Reserves in the North Sea', WWF-UK suggests a network of five experimental marine reserves that will improve the sustainability of fisheries, protect biodiversity, and help establish a healthy ecosystem.
WWF-UK is calling for a network of marine protected areas as part of the UK Marine Bill to ensure that vulnerable species and habitats can begin to recover from damage and disturbance caused by human activities, and adapt to the pressures of climate change. This report shows that areas closed to fisheries can meet conservation targets without having a substantial negative impact on the fishing industry.
The network of five trial marine reserves proposed by WWF-UK includes sites close to the Dogger Bank, the North Norfolk Sandbanks, and north of the Shetlands. These sites were chosen so as to target nursery and spawning areas, yet at the same time prevent fishing effort being redirected towards other ‘open’ areas, thus undermining the benefits of protection within the reserves. The most intensively fished areas were excluded from the marine reserve network in order to minimise the impact on the fishing industry. If successfully implemented by the Government, these trial reserves will displace less than three per cent of UK demersal trawling and less than 11 per cent of UK beam trawling effort.
Many fisheries management measures have failed as a result of targeting individual species, or small groups of species. WWF-UK says that introducing marine reserves in the North Sea will enable the Government to take an ecosystem based management approach to managing fisheries and can be viewed as an opportunity to reduce fishing effort to more sustainable levels.
The report recommends that the marine reserves exclude all types of fishing to avoid the problem of bycatch, and are closed off year-round to prevent a surge in fishing activity before or after the period of closure.
WWF now urges the UK Government to establish a UK Marine Bill as soon as possible and fulfil its Fisheries 2027 pledge to set up and run within five years, a controlled trial for a Marine Protected Area to test its effectiveness for increasing fish stocks.
