Have you EVER seen 350 boats in Studland Bay?

[Channel Sailor]

Many years ago I anchored in the shallow parts if Studland Bay a lot. I anchored there last week and my observation is there are a lot more areas of that grass stuff than there used to be. As it happens I looked for a sandy spot to anchor in.

 

[oldharry]

Seahorses? There's thousands of the little blighters thriving round the Sussex /Dorset coast. They are rarely seen because they are small, tend to live a little way offshore, are small, and amongst the best marine creatures at camouflage, with colour changing ability to match their background very exactly! Ask any inshore fishermen. except they wont tell you because they dont want their livelihoods nobbled by neoprene clad conservationists.

But seahorses havent been seen in the Bay for the last 8 years or so? What they are actually saying is that there havent been any in their small research area close inshore off South beach. They dont look anywhere else. How long would it take even a big team to check 96 hectares for a small, elusive, highly camouflaged creature even ashore? Yet they confidently claim there are no seahorses in Studland after a half day dive!

Eelgrass? "Boats shoudlnt anchor in it because UK has already lost 92% of its seagrass stock". Sounds terrible doesnt it. We really shoudlnt be doing all that damage should we? Hang on though. It was actually lost in the 1930s well before the post war boating boom. A wasting disease wiped out nearly all European eelgrass in just a few years. Channel Sailor is absolutely right. BORG has a series of aerial photographs starting 1953, which showed around 100 sq M of eelgrass reestablishing itself in the Bay. 10 years ago there was 96 hectares of the stuff. All that time boats were anchoring in it, yet it just kept growing, and spreading. Even in the last 15 years Google Maps sat pics show it clearly continuing to spread. A recent estimate is that there could now be 150 hectares of it out there. Nobodyexcept us has even measured it recently to verify growth or loss! Yet the boats are definitley destroying it! The Times and the Daily Wail all say so, so it must be true!

Moorings are damaging it and destroying it, they wail! Actually all the studland Moorings were laid in bare sand. the eelgrass has grown up round them only stopping where the chains sweep the seabed preventing it growing further. Ah yes say the experts but the eelgrass is shorter quite a way round the moorings. Yes. Its new growth! It wasnt there 20 years ago!

Thats why BORG has spent over 10 years challenging these guys. Not because we are anti conservation, but because the measures NGM is pushing so hard for will costa great deal of money. disrupt a great many visitors, and will dosweet nothing because the problems dont exist! There are conservation issues in the Bay, but NGMs smokescreen is obscuring them, and nobody else is looking.

 

[Frogmogman]

Interesting post Oldharry.

Whilst I'm all for doing what we can for the environment, as your post illustrates, even well intentioned ideas can be misinformed.

Even assuming there is a genuine issue, surely the way forward is to find a solution which allows boaters to continue to enjoy the bay whilst also protecting the environment. Bullying and hectoring is not the way to achieve this.

I remember being struck a number of years ago, when the Turkish authorities decided to ban anchoring for environmental reasons in certain parts of the bay of Féthiyé/Gocek, where previously we had enjoyed anchoring. Moorings had been installed which were sponsored by local businesses, and which were free to use. They also put in little bollards on the shore to stop people from tying their lines around trees.

 

[oldharry]

Of course the aim should be to work something out that works for all of us. thats what I have been trying to do for years. Misinformed? defintely. Well intentioned. No The aim is to make Studland, which is the UKs most popular sea anchorage by quitea long shot, and receives well over a million visitors ina normal year, some sort of exclusive reserve, accessible only to those few who are licensed to go and look at seahorses in the wild.

 

[Robin]

I see Countryfile episode tonight on BBC 1 7PMi has a look at Chichester harbour, cue more BBC bias?

Countryfile visits Chichester Harbour, the only Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty in the UK that’s managed by a harbour authority. Matt Baker and Anita Rani discover how you balance the needs of a very busy harbour with those of nature and wildlife. While Matt is out on the water doing the daily rounds with the harbour master, Anita finds out about projects that help to protect the local populations of oysters, terns and seals. And Adam Henson’s Highland bull Archie might not have long left on the farm, but his legacy lives on…

 

[Babylon]

Countryfile has become as real as The Archers - pure entertainment fiction for the urban masses.

 

[Blue Sunray]

Countryfile has become as real as The Archers - pure entertainment fiction for the urban masses.

Indeed and in the forefront of selecting presenters by quota rather than talent and/or knowledge, but no less influential for it.