A marine protected area network for Ireland

Children’s climate change protests have swept Europe. Concern about biodiversity loss is one facet of this protest. Biodiversity loss is caused directly by our actions and indirectly through climate change, as recorded in the hundreds of miles of kelp forest declining along the coast of Portugal, Spain and France.

In Ireland, many species that were once common are now rare. Mussel beds in the Boyne estuary dredged out by the port to deepen the river 20 years ago have never re-established.

Salmon stocks have also dwindled. As a result, ancient low-impact mussel and draft fishing are defunct in the Boyne estuary. Leaders in such communities, such as Leo Boyle, remember the bygone sound of flapping tails when the salmon smolts reached the estuary before going to sea. The common skate, native oyster and sea trout have also become regionally extinct in Ireland.

Citizen science
An international ‘Blue Lung’ campaign coordinated by the environmental umbrella group, ‘Seas at Risk‘, is mobilising citizens to become involved in biodiversity restoration and work for cleaner and productive seas.

The campaign includes a Marine Protected Area (MPA) project involving Ireland, Portugal and France.

The UN-agreed SDG 14 sets global goals to conserve and sustainably use the oceans and marine resources. Among the binding targets to achieve that health is for countries to effectively conserve at least 10% of their sea as MPAs (Marine Protected Areas) by 2020 (CBD, 2011 Aichi Target 11)

Currently Ireland has just over 2% of its marine area designated as MPA and is ‘on target’ to be the lowest designation in the EU by the end of this year. The seven offshore sites now designated cover less than 1% of our EEZ waters and inshore designation is also not yet adequate.

Designation required
And if lack of designation wasn’t bad enough, the sites we do have are neither healthy, nor cherished. They were largely designated top-down to implement EU Nature law.

Most people don’t even know if they are fishing or swimming in one. With no signage, no prompt to seek out the NPWS website information and neither site managers, nor management plans with stakeholder committees, there is no obvious way to know, engage or become involved in site protection.

Some even fear these Special Protection Areas for Birds (SPAs) and Special Areas of Conservation (SACs). One fisherman told me a Natura 2000 site is like a Portuguese man-of-war: they look nice in pictures; you rarely see them and you get a bad sting when you touch them!

Things must change and change fast.

Project Ireland

The MPA campaign has just started in Ireland, spearheaded by IWT (Irish Wildlife Trust) and Coastwatch who welcome people to join.

The aims are to raise public awareness for the need to have sufficient, well-managed marine protected areas, to bring our seas back to health and then make it happen with a bottom-up approach.

Bigger and Better: A Marine Protected Area Network

We need to move toward 10% designation fast and onwards to 30% to protect our wealth of marine biodiversity as evidenced in Marine Institute research trip discoveries.

Bigger Inshore
IWT/Coastwatch are working on a review of current MPAs and need local expertise to add ‘missing pieces’ in a bottom-up MPA identification approach, mirroring that applied successfully in Northern Ireland.

Is there an area that is not currently protected but should be considered as it has a particularly rich, or vulnerable or special ecosystem?

We want to ensure that known key features are at least marked in Ireland’s first Maritime Spatial Plan (MSP) which is being drafted now, even if designation takes a little longer.

The bigger MPAs could be extensions to existing sites, or new areas such as Bantry Bay, which is a rare ‘high status’ water body under the Water Framework Directive and is rich in seaweeds, seagrass, fish and lobster nursery grounds.

Bigger Offshore
Oil, gas or offshore fishing industry desires must be set aside when designating. We can start with reefs, using existing legislation and linking to the network of MPAs, which we see ending at our borders, while encouraging speedy passage of new legislation to create more MPAs for fish spawning and nursery grounds where existing law is inadequate.

Achieving this would not only be a win-win for marine biodiversity but also for our future fisheries and our image as a ‘green, environmentally conscious society’.

Better:

MPAs need to be known, understood and cherished. Think of it as home: where you want to feel safe and where certain rules apply. That is particularly difficult inshore where the number of users is growing and governance is grey.

France and the Netherlands have developed good integrated monitoring and enforcement schemes that we could adapt to our own use.

Involve traditional inshore fishermen who have all the skills of handling boats, understanding of local shores and weather signs. They are ideally placed to acquire extra identification, monitoring and legal skills to gain jobs or income as partners in MPA monitoring and restoration. Looking back into past local management is really useful too.

The Lough Swilly fishermen could have fished out the native oyster 100s of years ago. They didn’t. Instead they kept the lough as a well-managed fishery with ‘no take’ areas for brood stock, a minimum size and set days for fishing.

This was based on local knowledge, wise management decisions, executed through gentlemen’s agreements, later augmented by the ‘Lough Swilly Charter’ and more recently the Fisheries Act.

This was an MPA – though not officially called that – well before being designated as SAC and SPA. Ironically, it is since designation that native oyster stocks have dwindled, since introduction of imported Pacific oyster aquaculture and mussel bottom culture and attending associated pressures.

Instead of losing marine biodiversity and this local knowledge and skill, we are seeking to create a new way of working together for both to thrive.

MPA management and monitoring requires funding and this needs to be incorporated now – for instance in Ireland’s new PAF (Priority Action Framework plan).

The MPA campaign will seek and provide MPA information one-to-one and in events around the coast. Information on best practice, fair transparent law enforcement and access to justice from home and other countries.

It is supported by Client Earth, the international environmental law firm and due to run for three years.

Karin Dubsky Coastwatch