Striving to save our sea

IN SUMMER a teal blue flag flutters against the sky above Withernsea beach. You only get to fly one of these if the sea water comes up to scratch, but in truth that’s only part of the story.

The rest of it is told by people like John White, who has been fishing these waters for more than 40 years. John says the pristine sea bed teeming with rich marine life, just a few fathoms below his boat’s keel, will be anything but in a few years – if we’re not careful.

For now, Withernsea is luckier than most. Its seas are already protected against trawlers that scour the sea floor and that means this is an ideal habitat for crab and lobster, not to mention the Bloody Henry starfish, a dense coverage of sponges and ross worm reefs.

But John says there are even greater menaces than dragnets and one of the biggest comes from the diggers that excavate trenches for undersea cables.

Then there are the threatened wind farms.

One is earmarked for John’s best lobster grounds and he says he’s already seen man’s impact when pipelines were laid nearby.

“These areas are now devoid of life and I think it’s a disaster that people are allowed to completely trash the seabed,” he says.

“If they did this on land and newts were threatened, there would be holy hell on. But because you can’t see what’s happening under the sea, nobody seems to take a deal of notice.”

Withernsea is not alone. It’s in the middle of Holderness Inshore, a stretch of coastline from Skipsea to Spurn Point – which is already earmarked for Europe’s biggest wind farm.

John says they won’t be the only ones.

The Wildlife Trust is just as concerned and Holderness Inshore is one of four case studies in the country where the trust is working with people who have an interest in the sea to determine how best to protect our marine life.

In Withernsea, John is already ahead of the game. He marks egg-bearing lobsters to prevent them being landed; uses pots with little hatches to allow undersize lobsters to escape and, even though he isn’t obliged to, John puts back crabs that are over the legal size to sustain the fishery long term.

His bait even helps to feed the eco-system.

Thanks to fishermen such as John, Yorkshire has a healthy lobster population and the country’s largest shellfish industry, which is worth around £9 million a year.

“You make it pay by catching small amounts of a very high quality product that you can sell for a premium price and in sustainable quantities,” he says.

Sadly we don’t seem too bothered with it and much of the catch is exported anonymously to Europe. John says most of the lobster people wax so lyrically about on the South of France comes from our East Coast, even if it does say ‘French’ on the menu.

John is one of the country’s leading lights on marine conservation and was recently one of 20 industry members at a conference hosted by Prince Charles.

Kat Sanders of Yorkshire Wildlife Trust also works with him on a Living Seas project to raise public awareness that a healthy fishery only comes with a healthy marine environment.

The campaign is supported by the European Fisheries Fund and Kat says we may never again have an opportunity to safeguard the remnants of our once-rich marine habitats and wildlife.

“Until recently the seas have been out of sight, out of mind,” she says. “The focus on wildlife has been very land based, but we need people to recognise what’s happening at sea and say hang on, I’m not going to accept that.”

The Government seemed receptive and passed the 2009 Marine and Coastal Access Act which promised “clean, healthy, safe, productive and biologically diverse oceans and seas”.

When it took office the coalition affirmed that it would “take the act forward and make sure its conservation measures are implemented” in its ‘Our Programme for Government’, published in May 2010. The document even said initiatives from the Act, including Marine Conservation Zones (MCZ), were being ‘effectively implemented’.

They are not. A government-funded survey may have recommended a network of 127 MCZs where things like scallop dredging, aggregate dumping and trawling will be banned, but last December Defra announced that only 31 will be designated.

None will be in Yorkshire.

“That was a huge kick in the teeth, especially since some of the sites were, we felt, foregone conclusions,” says Kat. “Places such as Flamborough no-take zone which is part of Europe’s biggest chalk reef.”

Kat says the reasons given are vague at best and the Wildlife Trust is calling on the Government to stop dallying, set a clear timetable for all MCZs and to designate the 31 proposed sites immediately.

“That would be a positive first step but certainly not ideal – and nowhere near enough,” says Kat. “I think out of sight out of mind is a huge part of the problem, but we need the government to back its intention with solid measures.”

There is growing public support for action. A new poll commissioned by The Wildlife Trust shows that 92 per cent of us think priority should be given to protecting sea life, even if it means placing restrictions on commercial activities.

And last month the trust presented ‘Petition Fish’, containing a quarter of a million signatures, to Environment Minister Richard Benyon. It calls for a new Marine Bill and full government commitment to MCZs.

But John is sceptical. “My opinion is that these MCZs, especially the ones in Yorkshire, haven’t been granted because they want to build wind farms. If the seabed is given protection, those plans would be scuppered wouldn’t they?”

John says his biggest worry isn’t the wind farms that are planned, it’s the ones to come, again and again as we get closer to 2020 and the EU’s target of an emissions cut of 20 per cent.

However, it’s not all doom and gloom. Recently there was some overdue good news when the European Parliament finally debated reforms to its disastrous Common Fisheries Policy.

MEPs voted to end over fishing, rebuild fish stocks by no later than 2015 and a ban on discards. They also recommended priority access to grounds be given to fishermen like John who fish in environmentally sustainable ways.

But it’s not just fishermen that rely on seafood and Kat says marine conservation isn’t just about protecting fisheries.

“It’s vital that we have an ecologically coherent network and unless we do we’re going to lose things that we can never get back,” says Kat. “This has to be done now for the sake of future generations.”

• You can learn more about Yorkshire Wildlife Trust’s marine work at its new Living Seas centre in Flamborough.

Onshore zones too

Most of the seven recommended MCZ sites on the Yorkshire coast are offshore but along with Holderness Inshore, there are two onshore at Runswick Bay and Castle Ground – which stretches from Scalby, north of Scarborough, to Filey.

The Holderness Inshore sea floor is of special interest because it supports a dense coverage of turfs, sponges and ross worm reefs, which is home to more than eight different types of crabs, the purple Bloody Henry starfish and common sunstars. Then there is The Binks, a seaward extension of Spurn Point, where harbour porpoises and minke whales are often spotted.

Castle Ground is home to seaweeds, sea hares, crabs and molluscs such as blue-rayed limpets. Dotted underneath rocks are anemones and sponges, starfish and brittlestars.

During winter Filey Brigg supports half the English purple sandpiper population and is important for foraging seabirds, such as kittiwakes.

Indeed there are 225 creatures belonging to ten different families recorded on the Brigg itself.

One of the most important areas extends 700 metres out to sea on the southern side of Flamborough Headland. The area was established in 2010 as Britain’s third No Take Zone and has now been recommended as an MCZ to protect its population of sand mason worms, razorshells, shore and harbour crabs as well as flatfish, such as plaice.

It also has blue mussel beds forming an almost complete carpet over hard chalk and pebbles, which is broken up by kelp attaching tightly to the seabed.

Runswick Bay is recommended for seven of its 12 habitats, including rock, sediment and gravel. The rocky areas are dominated by kelps and plumose anemones, while deeper waters are encrusted in a living faunal turf of sponges, sea squirts, sea urchins and starfish.

Runswick also provides spawning and nursery grounds for many fish, including herring, sprat, cod, whiting and plaice. Harbour porpoises are regularly recorded here alongside foraging seabirds, such as kittiwakes.

• You can see all 127 recommended Marine Conservation Zones at wildlifetrusts.org/MCZmap