Afternoon chaps,
I have just joined the forum to keep you in the loop about all things Finding Sanctuary.
I was contact by a member of the forum who had attended one of our interview evenings and suggested that I post future days on here and perhaps a general thread with information about Marine Conservation Zones, how they are being planned and how Spear fishers can get involved.
Dave T has been doing the rounds for us,
not only spreading the word and representing your views on our Regional Steering Group – who will in fact be recommending Marine Conservation Zones to government in June 2011 - but
also interviewing spear fishers around the region using our specially made base maps. If you wanted him to map where you spear, then please contact him. He has given me permission to give out his details to spear fishers, so if you want to email him, please do so
here.
Dave (above) has kindly offered to make this thread a sticky so that all spear fishers will be able to see it.
Having read through all of your posts I’d like to clarify a few things:
Marine Conservation Zones are currently being planned by four different regional projects. They are:
o
Finding Sanctuary – the south-west
o
Balanced Seas – south-east
o
Net Gain – North Sea
o
Irish Sea Marine Conservation Zones – covering the Irish Sea for English waters
Each project will be recommending sites for their area, which will then be formed into a national network by Natural England and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee and then sent to the Minister (Environment) to be signed off. Each site will then be implemented along with any agreed upon management measures via byelaws by the
Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities (what were the Sea Fisheries Committees, but to include a conservation remit).
The aim of the projects is to plan sites that minimise the impacts to sea users whilst still meeting the conservation goals that we have been set. There will be cases where a feature (species, habitat, etc) only exists in one place and irrespective of the activities that go on there, will need protection. The level of protection recommended for that site however, will be relating to activities that are incompatible with it. This will depend on what is being protected: in some areas this may only mean a short seasonal closure to one or two activities; in others this may be all activities are restricted.
Our
online mapping tool is due to be rolled out for the rest of England to include all four regional projects (at present it hasn’t been decided if you will be able to draw in Welsh waters, but I will let you know when I find out) at the beginning of May 2010. This will mean that you will be able to map all of the places you go for the entire country, instead of having to do it for each project. I am told by the web people at this end that it will be much simpler to use. If you are having problems at the moment, please do get in contact.
I hate to break it to you but on the Finding Sanctuary "Feedback" page one of their officials appears to have revealed the punchline...
From: Feedback » Get Involved » Finding Sanctuary
"Natural England is currently consulting on proposed Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) in the south-west – these are specific sites to be designated under European legislation. There is an official consultation on their website identifying site boundaries. It is important to note that for SACs site selection boundaries must be based completely on scientific evidence (i.e.socio-economic factors cannot be taken into consideration)."
So, if socio-economic factors cannot be taken into consideration, and SAC boundaries must be determined completely on scientific evidence, what is the point of the public consultations and intelligence gathering which yields socio-economic data, statistics, indicators, and stakeholder information?
Spearfishing and other recreational activities, as well as commercial activities, are socio-economic by virtue of the way we are defined as "stakeholders".
I cannot see how our information, opinion or data counts for anything in the face of scientific evidence and opinion. THIS is what concerns me about this process. The (arbitrary) interpretation of scientific evidence will, it appears, be the last word.
To clarify this, we are
not Natural England, although they have one of 40 seats on our Steering Group. The following sentence you would have read on our feedback pages says:
“The Finding Sanctuary project is responsible for developing recommendations for Marine Conservation Zones (MCZs), a new designation introduced through the Marine and Coastal Access Act.”
The process for planning Marine Conservation Zones is very different from that being used by Natural England to plan SACs, although both types of site will make up parts of the UK MPA network. If you want more info on this, please email me using the address at the bottom and I will happily email you a fact sheet about the different types of MPAs in the UK.
What this doesn’t highlight is that,
with MCZs socio-economics will be taken into account. In fact a young chap called Rupert has just joined the team as our in house economist. He will be writing an Economic Impact Assessment for the sites that the Steering Group propose, which will involve looking at how sites impact on a local level and also on any displacement of activities caused by the designation of any MCZs.
I hope this goes some way to answering some of the questions and concerns that have been raised on here.
If you have any other questions, please post on here and I will try to get back to you as soon as possible, although as we now post on over 100 forums as well as everything else, this may take a few days, so bear with me.
Kind regards,
