Here’s an update from Richard Page, one of our oceans campaigners, on what’s going on in the North Sea.

This week work to protect the Sylt Outer Reef resumed so that now over 100 stones have been strategically placed in order to deter what is nominally a protected area from bottom trawling and sand and gravel extraction.

The method is one which has been effectively used to protect important seagrass habitats in the Mediterranean from being trawled. Our goal is to establish a fully-protected marine reserve that will deliver real conservation and fisheries benefits and do what the German Government has failed to do – despite its international commitments to stop biodiversity loss and create a network of marine protected areas including marine reserves.

Greenpeace first published its proposal for a network of marine reserves covering 40% of the North and Baltic Seas in 2004 and has been actively campaigning for the establishment of such a network ever since. During that time scientific and political support for marine reserves has grown globally as exemplified by the establishment of large areas such as the Hawaiian National Monument (362,000 km2 )and Phoenix Islands Protected Area (410,500 km2). In Europe progress has been slow despite the support of marine biologists. In the UK the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution recommended that 30% of UK waters should be closed to fishing.

Marine reserves are by far the most powerful at our disposal for restoring the former productivity of our oceans. The North Sea, like most of the oceans, has, through overfishing and other human activities, been emptied of marine life so that what remains is a mere shadow of what was once there.