Examination of Witness (Questions 51-59)
MS HELEN
DAVIES AND
MR ANDREW
LEE
16 NOVEMBER 2004
Chairman: Welcome to the WWF. We are
not going to have too much difficulty telling you apart. You are
Helen Davies, the Fisheries Policy Officer, and Andrew Lee, the
Director of Campaigns. I would like Diana to start the questions.
Q51 Diana Organ: I wonder if you could
tell me what you think are the positive benefits that Marine Protected
Areas could bring not just to the marine environment but to the
fishing industry as well? We have heard a lot from the fishing
industry this afternoon and it is your turn to redress the balance
somewhat. What contribution do you think that MPAs can make to
stock regeneration in comparison to other methods, such as fishing
effort, gearing, etcetera?
Ms Davies: Thank you. There are
lots of advantages of MPAs. You might expect that I would say
that. I think the first point I would like to make is that they
do represent good value for money insofar as they do promote stock
recovery and we have seen that from a wide range of examples,
not just in coral reef and tropical climates, as has been suggested
by the industry, but also in temperate fisheries such as we have
seen off the Georges Bank in America. They have the potential
to aid stock recovery and also protect vulnerable seabed habitats
like cold-water corals as seen at the Darwin Mounds and so on.
Diana Organ: Even though only four people
have ever seen them.
Q52 Ms Atherton: We know about them though.
Ms Davies: They do provide multiple
benefits. There is lots of evidence for that in examples from
New Zealand and all around the world to show that they can help
stock recovery in sedentary species such as crayfish, and that
has been studied extensively in New Zealand, and also with more
mobile species, such as cod and haddock and so on, on the Georges
Bank in America. They are easy to enforce in the sense that you
can tell where a boat is fishing by GPS that is on board a lot
of the vessels now. They can deliver multiple benefits. In terms
of what we mean as regards the definition of MPAs, we are not
just talking about closed areas, there is a whole variety of different
types of protection from seasonal closures, gear restrictions,
temporal and spatial restrictions and so on and so forth, so they
are not just no-take zones where everything is prohibited, but
in those areas where you have extractive activities which would
be prohibited they provide very important control areas so that
you can judge the effects of recovery, you can judge the impacts
of fishing. For example, in New Zealand in one of the longer established
no-take zones recently they found in the last couple of years
that there was an 80% drop in the population of crayfish but because
that drop was seen all along the coast they knew that it was not
just due to over-fishing, therefore they could look for solutions
elsewhere and the finger was not pointed at the fishing industry.
There are benefits in that sense. We know that the catches increase,
the size of fish increases, the reproductive capacity of the stocks
within those areas increases and obviously you have got the spill-over
effects of fish migrating out of that area and then they are available
to be harvested.
Q53 Diana Organ: Who do you think ought
to be responsible for their development? Should it be sovereign
government, the EU, the European Commission, devolved administrations?
Ms Davies: It really depends what
type of MPA you are talking about. Obviously they have got to
be adhered to by all nationalities so in that respect the EU would
have a role to play, but in inshore areas, for instance, you might
have a no-take zone within a Special Areas of Conservation, for
instance, or a Special Protection Area and it might fall to individual
Member States to enforce those.
Mr Lee: If I can pick up on your
question a little bit. Within 12 nautical miles, that is why WWF
is advocating a Marine Act, because that is the only way of getting
a joined-up approach, a proper spatial planning system. We take
it for granted on land but we do not have it at all at sea. That
would provide the context for this network of marine protected
areas of different types with different levels of restrictions.
Do not forget that a good system of Marine Protected Areas benefits
the fishing industry, not just in terms of fish stock recovery
but also protecting fish stocks and fisheries from other damaging
activities, so it is providing more of a level playing field.
Outside 12 nautical miles it gets more complicated when obviously
you have got the regional management approach under the CFP but
also a draft European Marine Strategy which is starting to look
at how that might be done.
Q54 Diana Organ: You talked in your example
about New Zealand and how you could tell other things that were
going on and migratory patterns. Do you agree with the SU report
that protected areas need to encompass the whole of a migration
route in order for it to be beneficial? In some areas these are
vast routes, are they not? If we take some of the fish stocks
that the fishermen are taking, the migratory route could be almost
half the planet.
Ms Davies: I am not sure that
we would go that far. Normally what you would do is look at what
we call migratory bottlenecks, in other words areas where fish
congregate for breeding, for spawning or in nursery areas or along
a certain migration route rather than the whole migration route.
Even though the fish might only spend a small proportion of their
time within that protected area, it is at a crucial stage in their
life cycle, if you like, so when they are breeding or when they
are spawning, when they are in vast aggregations, which is when
they are most vulnerable to fishing.
Q55 Diana Organ: You recognise in what
you are saying that Marine Protected Areas will have an effect
on fishing and will have an effect on fishing communities once
they are established. How do you ensure the economic interests
and livelihoods of those communities that might be to a large
extent dependent on that activity, or are you not bothered about
that?
Ms Davies: Certainly we are very
concerned about that and the social and economic implications
of this are issues that we take very seriously. If you want to
talk about no-take zones or closed areas, we would not advocate
the use of those strictly on their own, they must be used in conjunction
with effort controls otherwise you simply displace the effort
and concentrate it in other areas. In terms of the social consequences
it has been shown in other areas, for instance the improvement
in the tourist industry has offset some of the losses. In fact,
in terms of areas such as the mackerel box in the South West of
England the effort was displaced so widely as to not really cause
any impact at all. Those communities living closest to that area
did receive a significant benefit. We are not closed to the idea
of other consequences but we believe that over a period of time
these MPAs will pay for themselves.
Q56 Ms Atherton: Do you feel the introduction
of Strategic Environmental Assessments and Environmental Impact
Assessments will have a significant improvement on environmental
practices within the fishing industry in general and particularly
within commercial fishing?
Mr Lee: If I could start to address
this, and I am sure Helen would like to pick up on more. We think
SEA is a good principle to apply for a number of reasons. Firstly,
it is necessary to measure the impact of any major new proposed
fisheries, new activities, but it also provides a bit of a level
playing field provided there is a retrospective look at the impact
of existing fisheries. SEA will prevent one part of the industry
benefiting at the expense of another because it has lower environmental
standards. Also it will provide benefits to the fishing industry
and to other activities at sea, whether it is aggregates dredging,
or the development of marine renewable energy, for example, both
of which may be appropriate at certain places in the sea. If it
is applied properly it does provide a level playing field. Also,
it would generate a lot of data and one of the issues we have
heard a lot about today is the lack of data upon which to make
clear, firm long-term decisions which mitigate at the moment in
favour of extreme caution in some areas, and we think that is
right, but a properly applied SEA would generate a lot of the
data that could fill some of the gaps.
Q57 Ms Atherton: Who do you think should
do these assessments? Individual fishermen? Industry representative
groups? A N Other?
Ms Davies: Just to complete what
Andrew was saying, if I can come back to your question.
Q58 Ms Atherton: I am sorry, we are aware
that there is a vote coming up and that is why we are pushing
on quickly.
Ms Davies: Okay. I just wanted
to make the point that one of the main advantages for the fishing
industry in terms of SEA is integration with other sectors. To
date, the fishing industry has stood alone. There is an opportunity
to integrate this industry through spatial planning and other
mechanisms. In terms of who should carry out SEA, obviously the
ultimate decision at the moment as regards EIA falls to regulators,
and we believe that should remain. It may be that when these SEAs
are applied to fisheries, that is a new area and there is a lot
of data and information to be gathered and we feel that some assistance
from the new European Fisheries Fund, for instance, may be given
to help them in that task. If you take the example of EIA at the
moment, as is applied on land, the developer supplies the information
and the regulators make the ultimate decision, but they need to
have enough information on which to base that decision, which
comes back to the point about gathering data. The benefits that
would have are both in terms of assessing the impacts of fisheries
but also in terms of regional management of fisheries, because
obviously the data can be used for a variety of purposes.
Q59 Ms Atherton: Okay. Should Strategic
Assessments be conducted by area or fishery?
Ms Davies: Strategic Assessments
should be conducted on a wider scale, we believe, so that they
can incorporate other marine uses. Environmental Impact Assessments
could perhaps be applied to an individual fishery or the introduction
of a new type of gear, for instance. The industry made the point
that they did not foresee where a new fishery would arise but
there are two very good examples, and one has come up recently,
NEAFC—the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission—which
met last week, which we attended, with regard to deep-sea fisheries.
That could be classed as a new fishery. Also, within the Strategy
Unit Report there was quite a strong recommendation for new exploitation
within inshore fisheries so, for instance, if a new shellfish
fishery were to open, EIA should be applied to that we believe.
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