Remove Red Tape

Water & Marine: Conservation and Use of Marine Environment

These regulations deal with conservation of our marine ecosystems and aquatic life, and include a comprehensive licensing system for potentially damaging marine activities.

We want to hear your views on how we could reduce regulatory burdens, and improve implementation of these regulations; to ensure that we can deliver our policy aims and protect the Marine environment in the most effective way. For example, would it be possible to extend the number of activities in the marine environment that are exempt from the requirement for a marine licence, because they pose little or no risk to the environment or navigational safety?  This could be done by amending The Marine Licensing (Exempted Activities) Order.

Visit the Water and Marine theme landing page here.

Tell us what you think should happen to these regulations and why, being specific where possible:

• Should we scrap them altogether?
• Could their purpose be achieved in a non-regulatory way (eg through a voluntary code?) How?
• Could they be reformed, simplified or merged? How?
• Can we reduce their bureaucracy through better implementation? How?
• Can we make their enforcement less burdensome? How?
• Should they be left as they are?

69 comments on “Water & Marine: Conservation and Use of Marine Environment”

1. Peter Hebard on March 25, 2012 at 9:29 am said:

   There is a WIn-Win, as Alan suggests, but there could be even wider beneficiaries. The collocation of wind farms and MCZs has been extensively discussed but, as the RT Challenger has suggested, the operators have been against it, fearing compliance with regulations, often irrelevant to their location, would make their operations even less economically viable than they are now.

   Equally fishermen are hoping to be able to fish in at least some areas of wind farms but will have to be excluded from of the others closest to the turbine towers, cables etc.

   However, those exclusions zones have the potential to not only foster Biodiversity in a similar way to an MCZ but also to become a “no-take” nursery area for the fish and shellfish the Fishermen want to catch. Since they will already be heavily modified by the turbine placement works, the real opportunity is to persuade the wind farm developers to VOLUNTARILY ensure that their works also provide the habitat to foster both biodiversity and fish catches too, rather than impose additional regulations.

   Both turbine tower scour protectors and cable installations can do that and some long established demonstration projects run by the NOC and others have proved that recycled materials can be used to produce artificial habitat at negative cost, in much the same way as wrecks are known to do. (The Wreck-to-Reef project in Weymouth Bay includes a reef being seeded with lobsters and another specifically for biodiversity, I believe.)

   Sinking wrecks may not be appropriate but much smaller structural habitat could have similar effect to natural reefs to make best use of the exclusion zones. Lundy Island and others have shown the benefit to fishermen of no-take zones but to be effective they need the most productive habitat.

   I have run workshops at CEFAS and other government- funded Research Agencies, challenging them to use their world-class expertise to show how make our seabed more productive and improve the economic viability of fishing, to balance their regulatory activity which can have negative effect. The IFCAs are now showing the benefit of directing their efforts in similar way and government funded Seafish has that as their prime objective.

   To use a farming analogy, MCZs could be the “hedgerows” of the sea. However, now that we have nominated an adequate number to be left untouched, the way is open to provide the “good husbandry” to make the rest of our seas as productive as possible. The Crown Estate and Universities are switching their effort in that direction, focusing on the far wider “eco system” services that our marine environment can offer. Whereas we need to exercise extreme caution and pilot every development, they have the potential to have a far more positive effect on biodiversity than just protecting a sea bed that is already much modified from its natural state.

   Our fishermen are losing access to significant areas of their traditional fishing grounds for several reasons and environmentalists are seeing more and more natural habitat disturbed. It makes sense to find intelligent ways to offset the losses to both parties by proactive initiatives, rather than refuse to try.

   Discussions with Wind Farm Developers, Aggregate Dredgers, Cable Layers and Oil & Gas producers has shown that they are all keen to show their “green” credentials by doing so. The on-cost is insignificant to their operations, whereas is it would be impossible to finance such habitat creation, as a stand alone projects and beneficial effects to our seabed could more than offset the damage of past aggressive fishing methods.

   The MMO was launched under the slogan “Managing ( i.e. maximising) our Marine Resources” and experience of case studies around the world has shown that fostering voluntary cooperation between all sides and taking advantage of every new development to improve the Natural Environment is far more effective than strangling
   the best intentions in Red Tape.Comment Tags: good husbandry, Habitat creation, IFCAs, MMO, voluntary cooperation