Marine conservation Zones

Galadriel is right: when we first contacted RYA, we found they had already done a huge amount of work on MCZs. But they never told anybody! We met their CEO and as Galadriel says, gave her and her team a pretty fair roasting for this and pointed out that a lot of people wanted to know what was happening. Their head of Planning and Conservation tackled into this, and produced what you see now on their website.

But as others have pointed out RYA has the same problem as we have had with the MCZs: there is a huge amount of talk, thousands of pages (literally) of reports, interminable discussions, but NO DECISIONS!. And where there has been no decision, it is very difficult to report back. I more than once had my knuckles rapped by Finding Sanctuary for sticking my neck out and reporting results that everyone knew to be true, but which were not official. But it was very much 'divide and conquer', and only now that the whole thing has passed to DEFRA that we actually have some idea of what is planned: even now, the debate is strictly about 'where', and 'what', but most definitely not 'how'. And it is 'how' that is really the crux of the whole issue - how will conservation be applied to these areas?

Dont be too hard on the OP: there are a great many Boat Owners who have still never heard of MCZs: this is something RYA and I have discussed at length on several occasions: how to get the message about what is going on across? RYA can contact yacht clubs, but what do they do with the info? A vague note on the Club board which one or two may read? I can write on the forum until I get RSI, but if people dont bother to read it, with threads running up to 50 and 60 posts as they have done, who can blame them?

The real problem is that for many people, boating is an escape. We just dont want to know about the reality of politics when we are on our boats. I know, I was the same until I realised that there was more to this than just another 'conservation' thing, and found myself hauled in by the MMO to represent the rest of you. (That was their idea by the way, not mine).

When I retired I thought, ah at last I have time to do some 'real' sailing.....
 
My first reaction will be to contact our sailing club managemnt committee & ask if they are aware & if anyone is delgated with keeping abrest of what is happening. I doubt that (being dinghy sailors with an anti cruiser bias) they will be bothered until they realise implications to them. Actually persuading anyone to care is the hardest part until it is too late.i will also point out to the MCZ mob that as a fairway committee clerk I should be consulted on behalf of our mooring holders. So far we have been ignored.
 
Daydream believer said:
My first reaction will be to contact our sailing club managemnt committee & ask if they are aware & if anyone is delgated with keeping abrest of what is happening. I doubt that (being dinghy sailors with an anti cruiser bias) they will be bothered until they realise implications to them. Actually persuading anyone to care is the hardest part until it is too late.i will also point out to the MCZ mob that as a fairway committee clerk I should be consulted on behalf of our mooring holders. So far we have been ignored.
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You have to the 31st march to make your points to DEFRA. After that you may be able to say it through me or the RYA as established stakeholders, but dont hold your breath. Look at Annexe H of the DEFRA page on the BORG website and answer relevant questions WITH data and facts - not just opinions.

The people you really need to start softening up is your local Harbour Authority if you are lucky enough to have one. If so its all down to them as it always has been. If your estuary or moorings do not come under a formal Harbour Authority then you need to look at 'Moorings' on the BORG website, then get in touch with RYA. PM me if you have questions as another of my MMO hats is investigating moorings suitable for use in MCZs. Same goes for anyone who has independent 'free' mooring.

'Lucky enough' to have a harbour master? Yes, because without one you have to deal directly with MMO for EACH mooring. Mooring registration was going to cost around £5k per mooring. I objected to MMO (thereby hangs a tale!), and RYA are now thrashing out a deal with MMO which should cost only around £250 for private independent moorings.

Sorry about your Fairway committee: complain of you like, but your chance was 3 years ago when Balanced Seas invited 'interested parties' to become 'stakeholders' in the MCZ process. If you missed that boat, then you will have been left at the pierhead. It just highlights my earlier point - how do we get the message out to everyone?
 
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I think you see the point. If one is going about this stuff properly one as to get facts right
However, if the goalposts keep getting moved then you can only do your best.
If they knew Exactlywhat was proposed people could respond & people would suport/oppose as they thought fit
But if we get differing feedback you can understand the lethargic response.
The fastest response comes when they get the cost. So that is why that has to be accurate
 
Daydream believer said:
I think you see the point. If one is going about this stuff properly one as to get facts right
However, if the goalposts keep getting moved then you can only do your best.
If they knew Exactlywhat was proposed people could respond & people would suport/oppose as they thought fit
But if we get differing feedback you can understand the lethargic response.
The fastest response comes when they get the cost. So that is why that has to be accurate
Click to expand...

The whole point is that by keeping the proposals "airy fairy" & the objectives as "saving the world" then the great uninformed will all think it is a wonderful idea & vote for it.

It is only when the potential consequences are shown, especially financial & typically on the tourism industry & sustainable rural businesses that people wake up. As you say, cost of implementation & cost of consequences must be made clear to all.
 
Just took a look at the East Coast proposals: the whole of the Stour and Orwell estuary area, the Blackwater, Crouch, Cole and Roach estuaries, and the Medway estuary are all put forward for designation as MCZ's, and there are more key areas for "further consideration". See http://www.defra.gov.uk/consult/files/mcz-annex-a1-part1-121213.pdf - and of course the BORG website. The proposals are indeed a bit airy-fairy at this stage, but the door is being kept open to add further "conservation objectives" at a later date. I sail on the south coast, but as I understand it these proposals will cover most of the key boating areas on the east coast and make them MCZ's.

The potential threat to boating interests is if there is anything precious to conservationists on the seabed they might try to stop anchoring and perhaps moorings. Some of their habitats for conservation include "sheltered muddy gravels" and "subtidal sands and gravels", which might be anchoring areas?

So East Coast sailors/boaters ought to take a hard look at all this. At BORG we've been looking at the Solent and Studland areas in particular, but we don't have the local knowledge (or time) to cover the East Coast.

I do notice that the DEFRA document has no data on the economic impact on recreational boating in the East Coast area (perhaps because it's all so vague at present), but if anything is proposed which will put people off boating in those areas you can put some figures to it. For example, at a rough estimate, recreational boating brings revenues to the Poole area of over £11 Million a year. If just 1% of boaters were driven away by conservation restrictions, that would cost £110k a year, and so on. We need to put such arguments forward.

So, I suggest those interested take a hard look at what could happen on the East Coast, and respond to the consultation before March 31st.
 
Two years ago i attended the Essex coastal conference as a representative of my wildfowling club & also yacht club. It was mostly dry & irrelavent but there were a couple of interesting points. The representative from the MMO was asked by Cllr Ray Howard (Canvey west & ECC) what effect the new DP ports proposal at Shell Haven would have on the proposed MCZ's, the bloke admitted that he hadnt actually heard about this, the biggest port development in the country.
It beggars belief.
Also a young lady when giving a presentation on the benefits of MCZ's when pressed on the lack of stakeholder involvement freely admitted that "if we had allowed all the interested or possible stakeholders on board we never would have got it through at all. So folks it appears you have been well & truly suckered on purpose.
Of Course the legislation is now in place so we will be continually on the back foot.
 
When the local committees were formed in the Finding Sanctuary area I pointed out that the Cornwall and Scilly area had no leisure boating representative. An email and phone discourse resulted in the gentleman in charge contacting me and explaining that our interests were being looked after by the tourist rep, who had, I was assured sailed a dinghy at university. I believe they were very selective with who they picked to sit on committee.

Peter.
 
Can someone please give the correct address & possibly a contact name to write to at the marine manage,ent organisation with our observations on the proposals
As a comment& please do not take this as knocking
The BORG site has loads of info but it does blow the mind with too much info
An easier section for the casual observer would be handy. I have told a number of people about the site but they just get bored after the first few minutes
I wanted to put a note in the club jib sheet but it is hard work extracting the "more relevant" info to decide what to write
So like others I just gave up
But that is wrong- i know it is- but!!
 
Point taken, and working on it. We developed the website to try and condense the reams of information, but apart from the scale of the project and the huge mass of data and information which supports it, we too find there is what seems a deliberate 'smoke screen' policy, commented elsewhere in this thread, to prevent ordinary people from understanding and taking part. Getting a balance between 'simple' and in depth information is not easy either - theres just so much of it that making it too simple means leaving out key parts.

I will see what i can do.

Trying to sift through it, and highlight information relevant to the regular 'man in his boat', and present it in an easily digestible way is no easy task!

If you want something short and brief for your specific location, I may be able to help - PM me.
 
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Reply to Daydream Believer

The consultation is in the hands of DEFRA at present, who are overseeing the designation process, and ultimately decisions will be approved by the Minister concerned. Then the ball is passed back (I think) to MMO who will have to implement any conservation measures - which haven't actually been mentioned yet for the East Coast sites, as far as I can see. And the MMO will be advised by Natural England, NE....... Yes, it's a jungle of overlapping ministries, quangos, special interest groups, etc., a real alphabet soup.

The main page for consultation documents is at http://www.defra.gov.uk/consult/2012/12/13/marine-conservation-zones-1212/ - the response form is under Annex H, but there's lots of other stuff.

It sounds like boating stakeholders have been largely ignored in the East Coast process. If genuine concerns about impact on leisure boating turn up, and have not been taken into account, you could complain to the local MP's and ask them to forward complaints to the Minister (Richard Beynon), who does seem to be keeping a close eye on this MCZ business. It could be there's nothing much to worry about - but people need to dig into it and find out.

I take your point about the BORG website. We've had to trawl through endless documents, many of them well over 1000 pages, there's a lot of detail which we've had to get on top of to make a proper case. The website is a way of documenting this and putting it in the public domain, so our evidence and arguments, including some quite technical stuff, can't be swept under the carpet. Also it's grown historically, new stuff added on top of the old. We'll think about a summary page, but even that could end up pretty complicated.

As far as the East Coast sites go, particularly the Stour / Orwell and Blackwater/Crouch areas, there seem to be no conservation measures mentioned at all - very different to the Studland case, where the conservationists were screaming for an anchor ban. There will surely have to be further consultation if and when measures do emerge, so I'd suggest keeping a close eye on what happens and make your voices heard when anything specific comes out - as well as expressing a general concern in the current consultation about possible impacts on the important local leisure marine industry (with some finance estimates if possible). Also, yacht clubs or groups who are concerned could get in touch with the MMO and say hey, what's going on, we've not been consulted, please keep us in the picture - the MMO do seem to want to hear from all parties, they've been good in this way over Studland.
 
Daydream believer said:
Can someone please give the correct address & possibly a contact name to write to at the marine manage,ent organisation with our observations on the proposals
As a comment& please do not take this as knocking
The BORG site has loads of info but it does blow the mind with too much info
An easier section for the casual observer would be handy. I have told a number of people about the site but they just get bored after the first few minutes
I wanted to put a note in the club jib sheet but it is hard work extracting the "more relevant" info to decide what to write
So like others I just gave up
But that is wrong- i know it is- but!!
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That's not how Government consultations work I'm afraid.

They ask some very tightly defined questions. You respond to the questions. Anything which isn't covered by there questions is ignored.

http://www.defra.gov.uk/consult/files/mcz-annex-h-121213.doc
 
MarlynSpyke said:
It sounds like boating stakeholders have been largely ignored in the East Coast process. If genuine concerns about impact on leisure boating turn up, and have not been taken into account, you could complain to the local MP's and ask them to forward complaints to the Minister (Richard Beynon), who does seem to be keeping a close eye on this MCZ business. It could be there's nothing much to worry about - but people need to dig into it and find out.
Click to expand...

Two years ago I alerted those on the East Coast from this forum to mobilise themselves the same way those have done on the South coast.

http://www.ybw.com/forums/showthread.php?260546-Your-not-safe-on-the-East-Coast!&highlight=

As you will see the response was at best rather apathetic. Some suggesting, "the RYA will sort it out, if they dont I'll cancel my membership". With some even suggesting "even if it was law, we would just ignore it". I had another suggest to me on the phone that HM Customs back in the 19th Century could not stop smuggling on the East Coast so what chance did this lot have.

Sit back, let others do the work, then moan and whinge when the inevitable happens.
 
The Balanced Seas investigation was quite effective on the River Blackwater.

The representatives visited the yacht clubs and garnered details from the yacht club representatives as to the membership numbers, the activities of the membership; where did they sail, how frequently and where did they overnight? Did we have any favourite or specific anchorages? What was the maximum extent of our cruising area and the minimum?

The young lady undertaking the survey was a dinghy and small cruiser sailor from her youth and had a post graduate degree in enviromental science. In fact we discussed in detail the stance being taken at that time by the Studland seahorse gang and the relevance or lack thereof of rigorous science being applied. From the list of clubs on the Blackwater I am sure she had included the majority if not all of them.

It was recognised that the parties most likely to be affected by any restrictions would be those engaged in beam trawling and/or gtravel extraction. There was unlikely to be any increase in the anchoring restrictions above those already imposed for the commercial needs of the oyster fisheries. Restrictions will only be applied if there is the scientific case to support them; no more, no less.
 
"Restrictions will only be applied if there is the scientific case to support them; no more, no less."

Sigh! In the meantime in the real world....

1. In several places the scientists themselves don't actually know, and are expressing 'opinions' rather than giving fact based data as the basis for their recommendations. Our experience has been that when presented with factual data, these guys just out up a smokescreen.

2. The powerful and well organised conservation lobby largely backed by the Wildlife Trusts is pushing very hard to get MCZs designated in spite of a clear lack of data. They are extremely angry with DEFRA who refused to give way, and demanded more information about the 100 or so sites that they held back from the first Tranche.

If only it WAS just a matter of having a science based case in each location. It isnt. Social and econmic factors - i.e the cost to the local communities, and the effects on regional economies has to be written in, and in many cases this is why the MCZs have been held back.

I am interested to hear you say Balanced Seas worked well for you. It seems to be about the only plce in the country where it has!

Yes the Studland 'gang' as you put it were not very effective until they realised they had to beat science with science. Now the boot is on the other foot, and both they and we are coming up with substantial scientific data refuting the 'opinions' of the conservationists in the disputed areas.

Yes, if there is clear scientific evidence that something needs to be done, then we support doing it. But when we hear that a major 'scientific' investigation was not even aware there was more than one type of Seagrass, then the need to check their results becomes all too clear.
 
There are a lot of vested interests on the "conservation" ide that are trying to push personal agendas. Many of these people earn a living from getting grants for their "research" & sometimes try to pull the wool over people's eyes to get their own way.

It would be easy for us to try the same, but honesty is actually more effective as people start to trust you, whereas the devious ones start to be disbelieved. Steve Trewela & family are now starting to suffer for their earlier distortions & exaggerations.
 
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