Marine Reserves Petition
- Thread starter gus horsley
- Start date
cap n chris
Well-known member
Is this something to do with sea caves?
Hughie
Active member
graham said:
Graham - apologies - I've re-read my post and it probably came across as curt (Anne agreed). It wasn't mean't to be. I would be most interested in the reasoned perspective of someone outside the industry. I'm not looking for an argument either - my thoughts are probably not what you think they are.
graham said:
I've seen cows grazing perilously close to the edge of a very steep cliff!
I believe a creature known as Sea Cow exists.
gus horsley
New member
The idea behind a Marine Reserves Policy is to ensure that ecosystems around our coasts get some form of protection. Wether the degradation they have suffered is due to overfishing, pollution, pressures of tourism, etc is immaterial, the fact is that there are far more species living around our coasts than on land, yet they have virtually no protection. This is having a knock-on effect on many of our internationally important seabird colonies (for example we have 85% of the world's manx shearwaters) where there have been a succession of disastrous breeding seasons, 2004 being the worst (the year that a colony of 12,000 guillemots off the coast of Northern Ireland failed to rear a single chick).
The protection does not affect the draining of rhynes or anything above low-tide level and therefore should have minimal impact on coast-bound operations apart from the lessening of activity by jet skis in certain areas.
There has also been a huge amount of support from our fishing industry who have seen that the long-term implications will be highly beneficial.
To me the idea is a complete no-brainer but I can understand the views of persons involved in the farming industry who have fallen foul of various schemes in the past. The Wildlife Trusts, RSPB, etc will always attract controversy and not meet with everyone's approval.
The protection does not affect the draining of rhynes or anything above low-tide level and therefore should have minimal impact on coast-bound operations apart from the lessening of activity by jet skis in certain areas.
There has also been a huge amount of support from our fishing industry who have seen that the long-term implications will be highly beneficial.
To me the idea is a complete no-brainer but I can understand the views of persons involved in the farming industry who have fallen foul of various schemes in the past. The Wildlife Trusts, RSPB, etc will always attract controversy and not meet with everyone's approval.