Category: Wildlife Habitat: Ocean & Sea Conservation

1. Marine Conservation Society’s Appeal for Marine Meadows

   Posted on 2:00pm Tuesday 26th May 2020

   The Marine Conservation Society wants to help vital seagrass around the south coast of England to recover.  Seagrass exists in the shallow, sheltered waters around the UK’s coast.  It forms marine meadows and these are very productive ecosystems and biodiversity hotspots, with marine life such as the spiny seahorse and the short snouted seahorse.  And cuttlefish and sharks breed here.  They are also nurseries for Pollock, cod and plaice. Support the Marine Conservation Society's Marine Meadow Appeal Image copyright Marine Conservation Society   The climate is changing fast, and the impact is clear to see - bushfires, floods, storms, temperatures which are soring, melting ice sheets.   Seagrass can help tackle the changing climate.  It is a flowering plant, and it lives underwater around the UK's coast in shallow, sheltered waters.  Crucially, it absorbs 10% of the carbon buried in ocean sediment every year - so it's a great weapon in tackling global warming.  The MCS says that it's estimated that seagrass around the UK shores can absorb and store at least as much carbon per hectare as trees in UK woodlands! The problem is that a major threat to seagrass comes from traditional moorring methods - anchors and chais drag along the seabed. If these traditional moorings can be repaced with advanced systems, where chains are raised off the seabed, it will be possible to regenerate marine meadows.   The MCS has trialled these and discovered that they work!  So they want to expand it to five marine protected areas.  This will enable them to better lock in carbon and be a safe protected habitat for seahorses, cuttlefish and juvenile fish. The Marine Conservation Society  needs to install advanced moorings to help replace damaging anchoring methods and let seagrass recover.   And they are asking for donations to help them do just that. How appeal donations will help seagrass and seahorses £10 could help them replant 1 square meter of seagrass;  £20 could help divers monitor the recovery of seagrass beds where advanced mooring systems are installed. £30 could help them to cultivate 10,000 seagrass plants. £35 could help advise boaters, walkers and abait collectors on how to protect seagrass beds and other sensitive habits. £200 could help get old, damaging moorings in seagrass beds removed, ready for the new eco-friendly ones. The Goal of the Appeal: The goal is to raise £105,000 to install over 75 advanced moorings that will replace traditional, damaging anchoring methods and enable seagreass to recover. Find out more and donate here.

    

2. Please see this video from Gravitas - how nature is reclaiming its spaces due to the Coronavirus

   Posted on 2:00pm Friday 10th Apr 2020

   Sometimes you see something on the internet or on television that really hits you hard and makes a point extremely well. I saw this video, this afternoon, and I wanted to share it with you.  Please share it with everyone you can. The ultimate message is that we SHARE this planet.  It demonstrates how dominant the human race has become - and how selfish.   I am not going to tell you anymore about it - please just watch it for yourself.   Here it is: Thank you, Gravitas. Please vow to make a difference today.  Find out how to reduce your impact on the earth's resources here.

3. Tell These Big US Banks That Arctic Drilling Is Bad Business!

   Posted on 5:00pm Wednesday 26th Feb 2020

   The Sierra Club (a grassroots environmental organisation in the US) has announced that there’s big, exciting news from a bank! JPMorgan Chase have announced at its annual Investor Day that: It will not finance oil and gas extraction in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge It will not continue financing many coal-related enterprises, including thermal coal mines and coal-fired power plants across the world. The bank is by far the leading US investor in fossil fuels, and environmentalists and indigenous peoples have put pressure on the bank for years trying to move away from projects which threaten the climate. They promised to stop investing in and providing services to companies which derive “the majority of their revenues from the extraction of coal” by 2024, and not to provide financing to offshore and onshore oil and gas extraction in the Arctic Goldman Sachs also made a similar commitment not to financial oil drilling in the Arctic two months ago. Now, it’s vital that we put the pressure on other big banks to follow suit.  I wonder... Could their executives and shareholders live with themselves if there was an accident drilling for oil and gas in the Arctic which they had agreed to finance?  It only takes ONE spill to do unrepairable damage.  As the Sierra Club say, “Clean air, safe drinking water, wildlife and wild places are under attack-and once they're gone, they're gone for good.”  © istockphoto.com Mario Hoppmann Tell These Big US Banks That Arctic Drilling Is Bad Business! The Sierra Club say that banks worldwide are refusing to fund Arctic drilling.  Some US banks are dragging their feet.  But Goldman Sachs have done it;  they were the trail-finders who have ruled out financing Arctic oil and gas drilling, thermal coal mines and coal-fired power projects around the world.  Thank you, everyone at Goldman Sachs. Sierra Club Big banks don’t want to fall behind on industry trends.   The Sierra Club is asking us all to focus our efforts on the other US funders which, they say, are notorious for propping up dirty fuels:  Wells Fargo, Citi, JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America, and Morgan Stanley. The Sierra Club are asking everyone to: Send a message to the CEOs of the other major US banks, telling them that bankrolling Arctic drilling isn’t just bad business -- it’s a threat to Indigenous human rights and to the climate. Add your name here and you can send a message too, if you want to add power to it. Let’s all fight for wildlife and indigenous peoples and drill hard and deep for change in the right direction.  Let’s put pressure on.

4. 41 new Marine Conservation Zones expands England’s Blue Belt

   Posted on 5:00pm Saturday 8th Jun 2019

   In the run up to World Oceans Day (8th June every year), Environment Secretary Michael Gove has created 41 new Marine Conservation Zones. This represents the most significant expansion of England’s Blue Belt of Protected Areas to date. Stretching from Northumberland (where eider ducks live) to the Isles of Scilly off Cornwall (basking sharks, seabirds and fish) , the action Gove has taken safeguards 12,000 square kilometres of marine habitat.   A substantial number of additional zones were created in waters away from the coast – some in the deep sea – thus giving protection to habitats and species such as coral gardens, fan mussel and sea pens. Here’s a map showing the Marine Protected Areas Vulnerable marine wildlife will now have an opportunity to recover.    And if there are richer habitats for marine life, so there life will be better for those whose livelihoods depend on a healthy coastline and sea.  WWF has discovered that in marine protected areas, fish breed more readily and populations recover.  In the Apo Island (Philippines), communities depend heavily on fish.   After a marine protected area was created, catch per unit increased 50%.  Fish populations tripled.  Fisherman were able to save fuel and spend less time at sea. The UK now has over 350 Marine Protected Areas, covering 220,000 square kilometres – that’s twice the size of England. The areas protected include wildlife such as worms, seahorse and oyster.   Sand, tidal mud, rocky reefs and gravel will be protected.  Each as a role to play in the balance of nature.  The evidence about the importance of these new sites was gathered by volunteer divers who dive  for Seasearch, a programme co-ordinated by the Marine Conservation Society.    Divers spent hours diving very diverse seabed habitats to record the marine plants and animals living in our inshore seas.   There were extensive consultations with local fishermen too, and members of the public. This citizen science enabled groups such as the Marine Conservation Society to make a case for protecting many of these sites, and they will now be involved in developing management and monitoring plans for these newly protected areas. After all, protection must be active if it is to mean anything.  It’s no good allocating a protected status to an area if action isn’t taken to ensure that the area IS protected. Bodies such as the Marine Management Organisation and local Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities will have the responsibility of ensuring that the zones are protected, working with local fishing communities and other organisations. The UK government has called for 30% of the world’s oceans to be protected by 2030.  It has co-chaired the creation of the Commonwealth Clean Ocean Alliance with Vanuatu.  Later this year, the government will publish an international strategy setting out more action to conserve the ocean and use it in a sustainable way. Meantime, its next step closer to home is to stop damaging activities in the Marine Protected Zones which affect wildlife.   Beam trawling, dredging for scallops and langoustines are among these – and surely there must be some action to stop some leisure activities, too.  But this is a great start, and the fact that citizen scientists (e.g. willing volunteers) and world-class marine scientists have worked together to contribute towards such an outcome is heart-warming. Watch this space!

    

5. Good news for puffin numbers on the Farne Islands

   Posted on 8:00pm Friday 22nd Feb 2019

   The beautiful Farne Islands are one of the best places to see the much loved puffin in the UK. Puffins mate for life.  They separate over winter and pair up again when they come back to the islands in the spring. National Trust rangers count puffins on the Farne Islands as the birds return there to breed and raise their young between April and late July. Previously, they have undertaken a full puffin census every five years.  From 2019, however, they are going to count the puffins every year.  The numbers tell the rangers if there’s been an increase or decrease in the colony – and that data is fed into national information to monitor trends and give an idea of how we can help puffins survive. They will be checking to see if their holes have anyone in them or not.  They’ll look for signs of puffin footprints and fresh digging, and count the puffins living inside the nests. Puffins have traditionally done well on the Farne Islands.  The National Trust has worked to protect them;there’s been good sources of food, a lack of ground predators and plenty of suitable nesting areas. In May 2018, rangers had been worried that puffins had been hit by a long, harsh winter and poor food supplies.   But on the Farne Islands, the birds have weathered a cold, stormy winter.   Rangers counted 43,956 pairs of birds – a 9% increase from 2013! This is an improvement – a 9% increase from 2013.  Mind you, back in 2003, 55,674 pairs were recorded, so there’s still a way to go. The puffins now face a challenge from increasing seal pup numbers (who went up from 1,704 to 2,602 in the last 5 years) – it means there’s less space for puffins on the outer islands. The Farnes achieved their 25th anniversary of their National Nature Reserve status back in 2018.  Such status has helped in several ways: The provision of significant areas of nature habitats Opening up additional finance for the protection of the islands Providing resource for research and studies into protecting puffin numbers. Monitoring the puffins every year will help the Trust track numbers against likely causes of population change – could changes be down to climate change, changes in the sand eel population or something else completely Meantime, the puffin remains on the British Trust for Ornithology's red list for the UK, indicating concern for its future. Three things we can do to help puffins are: Reducing our single-use of plastic Preventing over-fishing - buy sustainable fish.  The Marine Conservation Society has a sustainable fish guide.   Or eat more vegetarian and/or vegan food!  Limiting our use of non-renewable energy