The UK government's Ocean Country Partnership Programme (OCPP) team share updates on oiled wildlife response training recently delivered in Sri Lanka.
JNCC and Cefas, through the UK's Ocean Country Partnership Programme (OCPP), have recently supported the delivery of oiled wildlife response training for 30 frontline responders across Sri Lanka in collaboration with the Government of Sri Lanka and delivered by the South African Foundation for the Conservation of Coastal Birds (SANCCOB).
The OCPP has been working with the Department of Wildlife Conservation in Sri Lanka and SANCCOB to strengthen Sri Lanka’s capacity and expertise in oiled wildlife response. Under this partnership, SANCCOB, an NGO that specialises in seabird and oiled wildlife response, held a 3-day Oiled Wildlife Response Training Programme in Hikkaduwa, Sri Lanka in early February 2024. The programme was attended by 2 Assistant Directors, 10 Wildlife Rangers, 5 Ranger Assistants who are responsible for the management of protected areas, and 3 vets who are responsible for the treatment of wildlife, from the Department of Wildlife Conservation in Sri Lanka. They were joined by 10 national environmental experts from local NGOs, other Government agencies and academia, who also presented their knowledge and expertise on the local environment and species.
This course will help build the foundation of an oiled wildlife response network, enhancing Sri Lanka’s current collaborative action to sustainably manage and protect the marine environment, benefitting the local communities that rely on these coastal ecosystems.
The training equipped participants with the skills, knowledge and confidence to respond to the initial phase of an oil spill and attend to affected wildlife including seabirds, marine mammals and turtles before specialist responders arrive on the scene. An overview of operations, requirements and resources needed during the initial phase of a response was provided before participants were able to gain practical experience. Participants donned full Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) used during an oiled wildlife response, and learnt about the toxic nature of pollutants, and the importance of personal safety as a responder.
Using 'robo duck', a robotic duck that simulates the movement of a wild bird, participants ran through a series of field scenarios to learn how to stabilise oiled wildlife and provide basic essential care during the first few days post-capture. The course ended with an overview of lessons learned from different case studies and how these could be applied to Sri Lanka.
The OCPP will continue to work with the Government of Sri Lanka over the next two years to build upon the oiled wildlife response technical assistance delivered to date, including the development of a detailed Oiled Wildlife Response Contingency Plan linked to Sri Lanka’s National Oil Spill Contingency Plan and facilitation of further training opportunities.
The Ocean Country Partnership Programme (OCPP) is a UK Government-led official development assistance (ODA) programme under the Blue Planet Fund, delivered by the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas), the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) and the Marine Management Organisation (MMO) on behalf of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra)
Find out more about the OCPP.
]]>Often called ‘the drifters of the oceans’ due to their limited ability to propel themselves, plankton are a diverse collection of organisms including phytoplankton (plankton capable of photosynthesis), zooplankton (animal plankton), and bacterioplankton (bacteria). They range over many sizes, and whilst the majority are very small, and not able to be seen by the naked human eye, they also include large organisms such as jellyfish. As the base of the food web, plankton provide a crucial food source to many small and large animals like fish and whales. Phytoplankton are also critical for the global carbon cycle, helping to regulate carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, and through photosynthesis, generate around half of the world’s oxygen. Despite their small individual size, changes in plankton communities often operate across very large spatial scales, impacting the entire marine food web.
Some human activities, particularly those which release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, input nutrients into the ocean, or extract biomass from the ocean (e.g. fishing), can negatively impact the state of pelagic habitats and their ability to provide these ecosystems services. For example, rising temperatures and increased nutrient pollution have been linked to harmful algal blooms (HABs) that can have huge impacts on marine biodiversity, resulting in economic losses for the seafood industry and tourism.
Because plankton are so sensitive to these pressures, this makes them useful indicators on the health and condition of the marine environment. Pelagic habitat assessments carried out to support the UK Government’s UK Marine Strategy and Environmental Improvement Plan 2023, and at a regional sea scale through OSPAR are used by governments to regulate human activities which negatively impact the marine environment. Observing and understanding changes to plankton abundance and community structure is therefore key to assessing the health of our marine environment.
Biodiversity indicators have a history of use in the assessment of marine mammals, seabirds, and fish; however, it has not been easy to integrate pelagic habitat indicators into a routine assessment process. Assessing pelagic habitats is complicated by the fact that it is difficult to divide up the open ocean into discrete geographic areas (since there are no clearly defined boundaries in the open ocean), limited data coverage (a significant proportion of UK waters are under-surveyed, particularly for zooplankton), and a lack of agreement on what constitutes a “healthy” state.
Until recently, it has also been challenging to generate the necessary public and policy support to incorporate plankton and pelagic habitats into routine marine biodiversity assessments. This oversight has likely stemmed from a general lack of appreciation for the important ecosystem services plankton provide, since their contributions to water quality regulation, food webs and global climate are difficult to observe or understand. To help overcome some of these challenges, we now consider pelagic habitats in the context of the human dimension, representing a new way of thinking which is now central to all the work this expert group produces.
What work is being done to better monitor and assess pelagic habitats?
The UK’s Pelagic Habitats Expert Group has developed an indicator that assesses changes in phytoplankton and zooplankton communities. This biodiversity indicator quantifies change in time-series of both plankton and environmental data to identify and understand changes in plankton community dynamics. It measures the functional diversity in the plankton community, through examining the abundance of groups of plankton that share a similar functional role within their environment. By assessing plankton as functional groups, rather than as individual species, we can identify important changes which can impact other components of the food web. This indicator has been used to assess pelagic habitat biodiversity status at the UK and OSPAR levels, and the outputs can help scientists and policymakers further their understanding of how the marine food web is changing in response to human pressures.
“Plankton are the invisible glue that hold the web of life together in our seas, coasts, and estuaries, providing the crucial services that are critical to our marine natural capital. Our investigations under “PelCap” (as part of the mNCEA programme) are helping us to truly value this much unappreciated asset.”
This indicator and our understanding have fundamentally evolved over the past 10 years through a series of EU and UK funded projects and this work is still ongoing as part of the Defra-funded Pelagic Natural Capital project, or PelCap for short. Over more than a decade of collaborative research, the Pelagic Habitats Expert Group has substantially progressed understanding of not only plankton functional diversity, but also how healthy plankton communities provide the essential ecosystem services, upon which we all depend.
The expert group is now focusing on integrating this work into the marine arm of Defra’s flagship three-year Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment (NCEA) research and development programme. Marine (m)NCEA is delivering evidence, tools and guidance to integrate natural capital approaches into policy and decision making for marine and coastal environments. This will enable policymakers and decision makers to ensure that ecological, societal, and economic information about our marine environment is considered holistically.
Researchers from the UK and OSPAR member countries routinely assess long-term environmental monitoring datasets using indicators to inform the state of marine biodiversity. The Assessment of Pelagic Habitats for the new OSPAR Quality Status Report 2023 has used this indicator, as well as two others, to provide an assessment of pelagic habitats biodiversity, and for the first time in the context of human activities that impact plankton and pelagic habitats. This work also forms the basis for pelagic habitats assessment under the UK Marine Strategy.
The main findings of the assessment were that pelagic habitats in the OSPAR Maritime Area have experienced widespread changes over the past 60 years, with a general pattern of decreasing phytoplankton and zooplankton abundance across mainly offshore areas of the Greater North Sea, Celtic Seas, and Bay of Biscay and Iberian Coast. These long-term trends have largely continued through 2015-2019, and are expected to continue, eventually impacting higher food web levels. Due to these widespread changes which have been linked to pressures generated by human activities, pelagic habitats in the Greater North Sea, Celtic Seas, and Bay of Biscay and Iberian Coast all have a status which is considered “not good”.
Going forward, PelCap will continue to form an important component of Defra’s mNCEA programme, exploring in more depth the links between human activities and the impacts on the plankton community and the ecosystem services they provide. Valuing plankton through a ‘natural capital’ approach can help us understand the societal, cultural, and economic value of these goods and services to society. With Defra’s support, we will work to strengthen the UK’s capacity for pelagic habitats monitoring, conduct empirical research on how human pressures are impacting pelagic habitats, and generate science communication outputs to help promote the natural capital value of pelagic habitats to relevant stakeholders and the public. Finally, with the evidence and tools generated under the programme, we hope to help policymakers consider the costs and benefits associated with different conservation and management approaches to safeguard the health of our seas.
“The Defra-funded PelCap project has made huge progress in advancing our understanding of plankton as remarkable organisms sustaining our seas. By looking through a ‘natural capital’ lens and understanding the value of plankton in supporting the goods and ecosystem services our ocean provides, we can make better decisions around the protection and management of our marine environment.”
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It’s not easy when ‘frags’ of coral are packed individually, sometimes within bags that obscure the contents, and even for those corals which are easily seen, distinguishing features can be absent after the long flight. On this occasion, inspectors had access to a new visual guide “Identification of CITES-listed live stony coral in the aquarium trade” which they used to confirm it was just a paperwork error rather than an attempt to illegally import CITES-listed coral.
But why are these corals in bags at borders anyway?
Corals have been used and traded for 1000s years for building materials, jewellery and, more recently, live for the international aquarium trade. The live coral trade can provide important local livelihoods, it can incentivise the protection of reef ecosystems because collectors want to have access to high quality coral, and it can drive the development of mariculture initiatives as it has done in Indonesia. Wild collection of corals is relatively low volume and a study in Australia found substantial numbers of species, which are targeted for the aquarium trade, even after sustained collection (Pratchett et al 2020).
However, there is evidence of over collection in some areas and localised reductions in the abundance of in-demand taxa, which prompted concerns about the sustainability of the international trade of corals. In the mid 1980’s, all Scleractinian spp. were listed under Appendix II of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna (CITES) as a mechanism to regulate global trade through a permitting system to address these concerns.
Key to the success of CITES in regulating trade is accurate species identification, something which is especially challenging for hard corals with over 440 different types in trade, and over 15 million pieces exported internationally between 2016 and 2022 (CITES Wildlife Tradeview).
Creating a guide to support coral inspections
Inspecting staff at borders aren’t coral specialists. Their day job requires them to inspect and verify shipments of live fish, snakes, insects and more, so having easy to use resources to help them confirm what they are looking at is essential. There are some amazing resources available for identifying corals in the field, including Veron’s “Corals of the World” (Vol. 1, 2, 3) and “Coral Finder” but corals often look very different in trade compared to in the wild. Some which are seen as large boulders out on the reef may look like an encrusting coral when a piece has been removed for the aquarium trade.
Scientists from the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas), working with the Indonesian Coral Reef Foundation (TERANGI) and the Indonesian Nature Foundation (Yayasan Alam Indonesia Lestari - LINI) set out to develop a guide to identify corals in trade. We (the authors) wanted to consider how they may have been cut or grown for trade, how their key features may look after a long flight, to provide clues to help distinguish between wild collected and maricultured pieces and most importantly, we needed to produce a guide which is based on CITES accepted taxonomy to avoid confusion when checking lists of species on permits.
How did we develop it?
The first thing we needed to do was to establish a list of taxa based on which genera are most traded live. I say taxa because most of the time, corals are traded at the genus level due to the difficulties in accurately identifying coral to species even by an expert with a microscope, but there are some occasions when traders are required to list species level for example Euphyllia.
We used CITES trade data (between the years 2010 and 2019) which is freely available on the CITES Wildlife Tradeview online platform. All genera with more than 10,000 pieces of live coral traded during that period were included in our initial list of taxa for the guide. We then shared this list with various stakeholders including importers and exporters, scientific authorities, and coral experts to ensure we had captured all key taxa in trade.
Once we had our taxa list, we began the discussion about how to group the corals into chapters using something intuitive to a non-specialist. After much discussion, we settled on gross shape being the key character to group taxa. Importantly, the five shape groupings are as they would be seen in trade and not in the wild, so most taxa fall into one of two groups of “encrusting” as it is often the case that a small piece is taken from a larger wild individual and placed or grown onto a concrete base. This final guide was widely consulted on and reviewed externally by coral taxonomist Professor Bert Hoeksema.
How to use it
There are two ways to use the guide. For routine inspections, there will be a CITES permit accompanying the shipment which lists all taxa present within the box. In this scenario, inspectors would look up each of the named taxa using the contents page at the start of the guide which directs them to the page needed. However, where corals have been imported without the correct paperwork and there is no list of taxa included, inspectors must begin by looking at the shape of the piece in front of them and turning to the most appropriate shape chapter to begin the identification process.
Once they have matched the piece in front of them to a shape chapter, they will be presented with an overview page which has photos of all the genera listed within it. Now inspectors can look for the most likely candidates for the piece in front of them and turn to the genus level page to begin checking specific distinguishing features and comparing it with its look-alikes.
Checking for signs of mariculture
For each chapter and shape type, information is provided on signs of mariculture production to support inspectors in distinguishing between coral pieces which have been collected from the wild or produced in mariculture initiatives. Details relating to the artificial base including fouling and maturity of the cement and glue are relevant across shapes, but other features are specific to certain shapes such as the symmetry of the piece following mariculture or the size of the coral piece relative to the artificial base. It can be very difficult to differentiate between maricultured corals (Source code F) and wild collected corals.
Watch list
We included a watch list in the guide which contains taxa which may be subject to current or previous trade suspensions or other restrictions, or which may be slow-growing, have a high value or are traded in high volumes. UK border teams have requested that this watch list be produced as a poster which can be displayed where inspections take place as a quick reference to taxa which may require closer examination.
The guide also provides 14 context pages providing useful information on CITES source codes, mariculture, shipment red flags and references to other important resources like CITES accepted taxonomy.
International launch
The guide was launched during a Defra-hosted side event at the CITES Convention of the Parties (CoP19) in November 2022. The event was open to international delegations, non-government organisations and industry bodies. The panel, which was convened by Defra, included presentations by Guy Clarke from Border Force, Dominic Whitmee from OATA, Nichola Burnett from JNCC and myself, on the challenges of monitoring corals in trade and how this guide can help.
Around 150 copies of the A5 version of the guide were made available at the side event and all were snapped up, with requests for us to provide hard copies for use at borders. We have since provided around 100 physical copies of the guide in English to border staff in the UK and The guide has also been shared with the Korean scientific authority who have now produced the document in Korean.
Training sessions
On 5th October 2023 staff from Quarantine, BPSPL technical units, the CITES Management Authority, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry and the Coral Association attended a short training course with accompanying resources.
Gayatri Reksodihardjo-Lilley (founder of LINI) who organised the training said
“The feedback from the training session was overwhelmingly positive, with participants expressing a keen interest in further sessions at their respective offices. Moreover, they expressed a willingness to distribute the guidebooks to their field staff for wider utilization.”
We hope that together, the guide and the training will support quicker, more accurate identification and verification of corals in trade to secure sustainable coral trade and to safeguard corals on the reefs.
Collaboration is key
This initiative began back in January 2022 with a 3-day online stakeholder workshop to share knowledge on current processes in monitoring coral trade and identify the key challenges faced by different stakeholders. We all shared in the commitment to develop a resource that could practically support staff at borders, industry, and scientific authorities who want to ensure coral trade is sustainable into the future. The guide would not have been possible if it were not for dedicated project partners and a large team of committed collaborators who provided expert advice, photographs, and reviews.
]]>The importance of mangroves and other blue carbon ecosystems in mitigating the impacts of climate change is once again high on the agenda at this year’s Nature, Land-use, and Oceans Day at the UN Climate Change Conference COP28 in Dubai. Globally, it is recognised that ‘traditional’ blue carbon habitats, such as mangroves, salt marshes and seagrasses lock up large quantities of carbon that would otherwise be released into the atmosphere, further contributing to climate change. New research suggests that other coastal ecosystems, such as marine sediments (including intertidal and subtidal), macroalgae (kelp forests) and plankton could also provide an important source of marine ‘blue carbon’ not yet fully considered in the fight against climate change.
Blue carbon habitats in the UK
In the UK, blue carbon habitats typically refer to saltmarsh, seagrass, seafloor sediments, kelp forests, and mangroves found in the British Isles and UK Overseas Territories. As well as capturing and storing organic ‘blue carbon’, these habitats offer a range of benefits, such as providing nursery grounds for a variety of fish species, filtering contaminants and nutrients to improve water quality, and creating a buffer to help protect against sea level rise, flooding, and coastal erosion. Unfortunately, like many blue carbon habitats globally, UK blue carbon habitats are also now seriously degraded. Land use change, dredging, construction, sea level rises due to climate change, and trawling have had impacts on the UK’s coastal and marine ecosystems. Since the mid-1800s the UK has lost 85% of its saltmarsh, resulting in loss of habitat and the release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.
Evidence suggests that the management, protection, and restoration of blue carbon habitats, through mechanisms such as Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), could play an important role in mitigating and adapting to the impacts of climate change and supporting the UK’s Net Zero commitments. However, while the science in identifying and measuring carbon stocks in terrestrial habitats, such as forests, is fairly well established, much less is known about the blue carbon stored in coastal and marine ecosystems and therefore to what extent their management and protection could contribute to nature-based solutions for climate change mitigation.
Filling the knowledge gaps
To bridge the knowledge gaps, Cefas is working through the UK Blue Carbon Evidence Partnership (UKBCEP) to bring together science and policy experts from across Defra (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs), the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, the Scottish Government, the Welsh Government and the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (DAERA- Northern Ireland) to tackle the barriers in managing, protecting, and enhancing blue carbon habitats in the UK. In a recent UKBCEP evidence needs report, priority areas to address included:
At the EU level, Cefas is also providing policy and technical advice to the Joint Action on blue carbon which aims to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and innovative research on blue carbon ecosystems across Europe, including the Outermost Regions and Overseas Territories, and is a partner in several EU Horizon Projects investigating blue carbon across European seas (e.g. www.marbefes.eu, www.futuremares.eu).
Seabed carbon
One area in which Cefas is driving forward blue carbon research is on understanding the shelf seabed and how it processes and stores carbon in the long-term. Offshore shelf sediments cover around 9% of our oceans and store large amounts of carbon, however, they are not yet fully recognised as having the potential to contribute to climate change mitigation, and are therefore not protected for this purpose, by international agreements. In the UK, carbon storage and sequestration of the English shelf seabed has been shown to be important for climate regulation, and the existing MPA network currently stores a third of all the carbon stored in seabed across the UK.
As part of several Defra funded carbon management research projects and the marine Natural Capital Economic Assessment Programme (mNCEA), Cefas has been collecting new observations (raw data on seabed carbon stock, sequestration, and condition) in the North Sea shelf sediments. The research also includes developing and testing a blue carbon ‘toolbox’ of methods to help scientists understand where carbon stocks may be at risk due to their vulnerability and when management of carbon in seabed sediments may contribute to climate change mitigation. We are also assessing the impact of trawling on the relationship between biodiversity and seabed carbon storage, and will use predictive models to explore how different marine management approaches could impact the potential of the seabed to store or emit carbon.
Cefas has also been exploring how carbon sequestration acts as a climate regulation service, to understand the potential economic and societal costs if this carbon storage or sequestration service was degraded. For example, a recent paper estimated that damage caused by human activities and climate change over a 25-year period could cost the UK economy up to £10 billion in damages, due to coastal erosion and loss of key ecosystem services. A follow up paper explored the need for new accounting guidance and governance frameworks to manage carbon in shelf seas. A key aim of the mNCEA work is to develop a nationally standardised way of measuring, monitoring, (and hence valuing) carbon stored in the seabed and to develop technical guidance that will build a consistent evidence base to support policymakers to develop strategies aimed at improving their management, including the use of MPAs, to aid their protection and recovery.
Seagrasses
Seagrasses are recognised as a highly important coastal habitat for combatting climate change. Some species are up to 35 times more efficient at absorbing carbon than rainforests of the same area, and despite only covering 0.2% of the ocean floor, seagrasses store up to 10% of the ocean’s carbon. Unfortunately, in the UK, seagrasses are threatened by disease, pollution, and physical disturbance from activities such as the anchoring, launching and mooring of leisure boats. While it is estimated that 44% of the UK’s seagrasses have been lost since 1936 alone, efforts to replant and restore seagrasses, such as England’s largest seagrass restoration project have increased with pace.
To contribute to the understanding of seagrasses, Cefas has been working with Defra to look at how satellites could provide detailed maps of the condition of seagrass, saltmarsh and mud habitats, a key component of the ‘natural capital’ concept, and use them to understand the impacts of linking land and river management decisions on coastal ecosystems. We have also been exploring how to harness the power of computer science and colour physics to better survey seagrass and saltmarshes and describe their presence around our coasts and to monitor changes. This has included working with imagery from remotely piloted aircraft (‘drones’), using machine learning and looking at how we can transfer methods used in mobile phone cameras to improve the quality of vegetation imagery.
Protecting blue carbon globally
As negotiators seek to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to tackle climate change during COP28, protecting and restoring blue carbon habitats will be one of several important ‘nature-based’ approaches that can help reduce carbon; support adaptation and the resilience of coastal communities; and provide jobs and economic benefits. However, there will always be trade-offs. As the concept of ‘blue carbon’ develops and our understanding of blue carbon habitats expands, Cefas will continue to work with UK and global partners to provide evidence- driven solutions to help policy makers and practitioners make the right choices for people and the marine environment and a sustainable future.
]]>Our Climate, Health, and Environment Resilience Programme (CHERP) has recently kicked off another year of activity in the Middle East. With the UN Climate Change COP28 currently underway in the region, we are taking a look back at what we have delivered in the last few years, and the progress we have made so far.
This work programme has projects across five of the Gulf Cooperation Council countries (Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates) as well as with Iraq, Iran, and Oman through collaboration with the Regional Seas Convention.
Through this programme, Cefas is working with partner organisations across the Gulf region to tackle the shared environmental challenges of climate change, biodiversity loss, enabling blue economies, and protecting human health. We have active projects in the areas of One Health anti-microbial resistance, Marine Protected Area management, climate change adaptation and resilience, water quality and pollution, biodiversity, invasive species, microplastics, and blue carbon.
Blue carbon is the carbon stored in coastal and marine ecosystems. Environments such as mangroves, seagrasses, and tidal marshland can sequester and lock away carbon from our atmosphere. These coastal and marine ecosystems store more carbon per unit area than terrestrial forests and are now being recognised for their environmental importance and the contribution they can make in mitigating climate change.
In collaboration with the Regional Organization for the Protection of the Marine Environment (ROPME), Cefas undertook a review of the current scientific evidence of the extent and carbon sequestration potential of blue carbon ecosystems in the ROPME Sea Area, and prepared a Regional Blue Carbon Inventory to support member states evaluate and manage their coastal and marine habitats to support climate change mitigation.
Across the whole ROPME Sea Area the recognised blue carbon ecosystems are estimated to cover 7,398 km2. The importance of these blue carbon habitats should also be considered in terms of the greater proportion of emissions they would account for once total emissions have been significantly reduced, the total carbon stored, and the important wider ecosystem services delivered by these ecosystems.
As part of this work, we prepared a Blue Carbon Policy Brief to support the communication of evidence outputs and effective management of these ecosystems.
Nationally, we are undertaking work on seagrass health and climate resilience in Saudi Arabia, and blue carbon research in Bahrain and Kuwait as part of a wider blue carbon project assessment of seagrass in the region as an effective climate change mitigation measure.
Climate change impacts on the marine and coastal environment will have major social and economic consequences for all states bordering the Gulf. Low lying, densely populated coastal settlements, critical infrastructure, and important ecosystems are at risk from sea level rise and major surge events linked to storms and cyclones. Marine species and habitats could suffer major decline, or even local extinction, as temperatures rise, oxygen levels drop, and seas become more acidic.
Cefas’ International Marine Climate Change Centre worked with ROPME to deliver a multi-year marine climate change Regional Action Plan. This aims to provide the evidence base to support ROPME Member States in protecting their marine environment from climate change, including through evaluation of climate change mitigation and adaptation actions. The outputs from these studies have been published as a series of Policy Briefs and Technical Reports.
Cefas scientists, the ROPME Secretariat and scientists from across the ROPME Member States collaborated to publish three new reports last year which provide practical advice on adaptation measures to build climate resilience across three priority areas; Fisheries, Corals and Desalination Plants & Industrial Cooling Systems.
While the presence of litter across the marine environment is evident, there is limited information about its abundance, source, and impact within the Gulf to inform effective management.
To address this, we have worked with regional stakeholders to identify the drivers for waste generation in region as well as reviewing the extent, distribution, and impact of marine litter within the Gulf.
Cefas has been working with partners in Kuwait and Bahrain to assist with the establishment of microplastic laboratories and national environmental monitoring programmes for marine litter. We are also working with ROPME to inform coordinated regional monitoring to provide essential insights into the long-term trends and impacts of marine litter in the region.
The coasts and waters of the Gulf states are home to a range of biodiversity including species and habitats of global conservation importance such as coral reefs, turtles, and dugongs. Protecting this biodiversity is important for conservation and for human livelihoods. It is also essential for a growing ecotourism industry, to protect coasts from erosion, to build resilience to climate change and for productive fisheries.
We have been working to support partners across the region on evidence gathering, monitoring, assessing, and managing key marine species and habitats. From the deployment of Baited Remote Underwater Video Survey equipment in Qatar to investigate whale shark aggregations, reviewing pathways for invasive species transmission in the United Arab Emirates, to developing standards for assessing marine and coastal water quality in Bahrain.
AMR is one of the most pressing global challenges threatening human health and economic security in the 21st Century. Today, AMR is estimated to be responsible for 1.2 million deaths per year globally, and this is expected increase significantly by 2050. The threat of AMR is primarily of concern in human healthcare settings, but it is increasingly clear that AMR can develop and spread in the environment, including freshwater and marine environments.
Climate change contributes to AMR by increasing the rate of horizontal gene transfer – allowing resistance genes to transfer more quickly between bacteria as the global temperature rises. Research has shown that increased temperatures increase both the rate of bacterial growth and the rate of the spread of antibiotic-resistant genes between microorganisms.
Cefas is working with regional partners to build capacity and understand the environmental and veterinary components of AMR to further enhance Gulf States’ AMR National Action Plans which countries are required to develop and implement under the United Nations AMR Global Action Plan.
Previous work has included the first regionally coordinated survey of AMR in the marine environment, which has built understanding and capacity to address the environmental and veterinary components of AMR and establishing a network of researchers across the GCC. This has included the publication last year of a marine monitoring programme to assess antibiotic resistance.
Current work in Kuwait, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates includes novel research to provide evidence on the extent of AMR in agri-environment sectors and retail settings.
Environmental education plays a crucial role in fostering awareness, knowledge, and action to address pressing environmental challenges. However, limited accessible or locally relevant resources as well as language barriers often hinder effective environmental education.
This year we have been working on the production of school resource packs on environmental topics such as climate change and marine litter, designed specifically for primary and secondary schools in the Middle East.
By creating materials in both English and Arabic, we aim to facilitate inclusive education for students in the region. The focus on locally relevant species and habitats within the resource packs and use of locally recognised locations represents an innovative approach to personalise the issues being addressed and promote personal responsibility and environmental stewardship.
Focus was also given to providing teachers with the tools they need to educate students on the causes, impacts, and solutions to these important environmental issues with an emphasis on promoting critical thinking, problem-solving, and positive behavioural change.
We are looking forward to continuing our ongoing collaboration on the Middle East Climate, Health, and Environment Resilience Programme throughout the coming year and into the future. With dedicated project partners spanning the Middle East region, our collective focus on addressing critical marine environmental issues exemplifies the power of international cooperation.
Together we are committed to using science and evidence to drive impactful solutions and promote resilience in the face of shared global environmental challenges. This collaborative effort highlights our shared dedication to creating a sustainable and healthy future for the Middle East and beyond.
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As world leaders meet at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) 28th Conference of the Parties (COP28) in Dubai this week, Cefas Middle East Programme Director Will Le Quesne, discusses the challenge of climate change facing the world’s hottest region and how new evidence produced by the Regional Organization for the Protection of the Marine Environment (ROPME), in collaboration with Cefas, will help support adaption efforts.
When people think about the impacts of global warming, they often imagine melting glaciers or freak weather patterns, such as heatwaves. But what about the impact on countries that already experience some of the hottest temperatures on earth?
The Arabian / Persian Gulf is the world’s hottest sea, and it is becoming hotter due to climate change. Its waters are experiencing increasing temperatures and salinity, rising sea level and decreasing oxygen levels. In Kuwait in 2020, sea temperatures reached a record breaking 37.6 °C. Home to a wide range of biodiversity including corals, turtles, dugong (sea cows), dolphins and sharks, this warming threatens the region’s biodiversity and coastal communities. Marine biodiversity in the Gulf is particularly vulnerable to climate change as unlike in other parts of the world, there are no species pre-adapted to warmer conditions that can move in from warmer waters as it becomes too hot for the species that traditionally live there.
Negotiations at COP28 will yet again address the importance of reducing greenhouse gas emissions to limit the impacts of climate change. This year will include the first ever ‘Global Stocktake’, where countries assess their combined commitments and progress towards meeting the goals set out in the 2015 Paris Climate Change Agreement to limit global temperatures well below 2oC and ideally below 1.5oC. This includes identifying where there are still gaps or shortfalls against these goals, and agreeing additional, collective action to address these. This year’s conference will also focus on delivering more finance from wealthier countries to help those most vulnerable to adapt to the impacts of climate change.
Climate adaptation is important in the Gulf region because even if the world stopped all greenhouse gas emissions today, the sea temperature and sea level will continue to rise. This will cause multiple impacts including further losses of coral reefs, declines in fish stocks, and will threaten coastal industries like desalination plants, due to damage caused by sea level rises and increased storms and cyclones.
Despite these risks the impact of climate change on the Gulf and the opportunities for adaptation in the region are relatively under studied.
Filling the evidence gap
To address this challenge, Cefas’ International Marine Climate Change Centre is working with the ROPME to deliver a multi-year marine climate change Regional Action Plan. ROPME is the regional sea convention made up of Bahrain, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates that covers the Gulf and northern Indian Ocean waters of the Member States.
The Regional Action Plan aims to provide the evidence base to support ROPME Member States in protecting their marine environment from climate change. This includes evaluating climate impacts and adaptation actions, and evaluating the potential for blue carbon habitats, such as mangroves and saltmarshes, to reduce the extent of climate change.
The outputs from these studies have been published as a series of Policy Briefs and Technical Report on the ROPME website. A recent evidence review (a policy brief is now also available in English, Arabic and Farsi) and regional risk assessment (also available in Arabic and Farsi) identified a number of climate impacts and risks to biodiversity and society in the ROPME Sea Area including:
Adaptation actions in the Gulf
Following these studies, Cefas scientists, the ROPME Secretariat and scientists from across the Member States collaborated to publish three new reports which provide practical advice on adaptation measures to build climate resilience across three priority areas:
The reports were prepared following a series of multi-sectoral stakeholder workshops with government, industry and academic representatives from across the region to share expertise and develop options for practical solutions to the challenges of climate change.
Participants from the climate impacts Technical Support Group during the risk assessment workshop in Muscat Oman.
“A key concept in building climate resilience, including for corals, is to identify and reduce human pressures” said Prof Michelle Devlin, Cefas’ Principal Coral Scientist, and author of the coral adaptation report.
“During the adaptation workshops we worked with regional experts and identified that excess nutrient inputs, coastal development and fishing are key factors that are negatively impacting coral reefs. Controlling these is the first step in building climate resilience before engaging in more active interventions to build healthy ecosystems, such as coral gardening, that can further increase resilience.”
To support action on blue carbon the Action Plan published the first regional inventory of blue carbon habitats for the region. A series of webinars was held to bringing experts together from across the region to share practical experiences in protection and restoration of mangroves, seagrass and salt marsh.
Dr John Pinnegar, Director of the International Marine Climate Change Centre said, “through active collaboration with experts from all eight ROPME Member States we have built a robust regional evidence base that can guide marine climate action in the region. This year’s COP28 has highlighted the urgency of the task ahead and it’s vital that we work together to address the critical challenge of climate change”.
[**To note this blog has been adapted from a previous blog, here]
]]>In recent years it has become clear, both in the UK and globally, that interventions are urgently needed to protect our precious marine wildlife and safeguard the resources provided to us by the sea. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are tools used by marine managers to conserve areas of the most vulnerable or ‘valuable’ species and habitats. Human activities (such as fishing and resource extraction) are limited or prohibited within MPAs, allowing habitats and animal communities to recover, and boosting populations beyond MPA boundaries. So crucial are MPAs to global marine conservation efforts, that more than 100 countries have committed to the ‘30 by 30’ Initiative, which advocates the protection of 30% of global ocean by 2030. This ambition was initially led by the UK and is now enshrined as part of the Convention on Biological Diversity Global Biodiversity Framework targets.
In UK waters our extensive MPA network has expanded over the last decade to include 377 MPAs, with a coverage of 38% of our waters. Surpassing the 30% designation target is an enormously positive achievement. It is, however, just the start of the UK MPA journey. MPAs are unlikely to succeed unless they are carefully managed, and their performance evaluated. Monitoring (where information is regularly collected through time) is a critical part of this evaluation process to help scientists understand whether management is leading to positive environmental outcomes. This is in part because MPAs are relatively ‘young,’ for example when compared to terrestrial MPAs where best monitoring practices and guidelines are more well established. Also, the costs and challenges associated with monitoring MPAs which can cover vast areas and a variety of different species, features and habitats can also be greater.
To try and address this in English waters, Cefas has worked closely with our Government partners Natural England and the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) for almost a decade to collect and analyse initial, or ‘baseline’ monitoring data at over 60 MPAs. This baselining phase, where the first set of monitoring data is collected for future comparisons, has proved to be a rich learning experience, providing a test bed to experiment with different monitoring approaches, encounter numerous challenges, learn lessons and apply solutions to improve future monitoring practices.
In October 2023 a new paper published in Marine Policy journal, led by Cefas scientists has documented the lessons learned from 25 MPA monitoring surveys. In this paper, alongside collaborators from Natural England, JNCC and Defra, we asked: what has worked well and not so well? What could we do better next time, and what do we still need to learn to improve MPA monitoring?
One of the most crucial findings was that while national or network scale monitoring approaches are useful and needed there is also a need to treat each MPA as an individual entity in terms of survey planning, data collection and analysis, applying solutions and refining lessons at the MPA level. A good example of this concept in action is the Wight Barfleur Reef MPA. Wight Barfleur Reef is a rugged area of bedrock and stony reef in the English Channel. supporting diverse arrays of sponges, tube worms, anemones and sea squirts. Located 50 miles from the Dorset coast, covering 138 kilometres squared and reaching depths of between 25-100m, its complex geology posed serious challenges for Cefas scientists when determining how best to monitor it.
Carefully considering the unique characteristics of the reef, our scientists used multibeam echosounder bathymetry, camera elevation and imagery data to develop an MPA-specific monitoring design and camera deployment protocols (see the initial monitoring report here). Next month, aboard the RV Cefas Endeavour, our intrepid survey scientists will revisit the site to test this new approach . If successful, it will provide a new approach to collecting data on reef condition and therefore improve the quality of monitoring data from Wight Barfleur Reef. It will also be a new milestone in the moving beyond ‘baselining’ to collect a second set of data in the time series that will be used to compare the effectiveness of the MPA over time.
Another key impact of the Marine Policy paper is an agreement between the four Government bodies on where to focus research and development efforts in the future to deliver the best possible evidence for MPA success. Current and future priorities identified in the report include: developing metrics to indicate MPA condition(e.g. Downie et al. 2021), and the use of novel technologies such as improved imaging systems, environmental DNA analysis and Artificial Intelligence for improving data quality and affordability.
There is still much to do to improve our understanding and monitoring of vulnerable habitats and species in MPAs. However, reflecting on our journey so far has set our direction. Going forward, our MPA monitoring work will include working more closely across different organisations and disciplines within Cefas. We are also keen to partner with other types of survey (e.g. Highly Protected Marine Areas, Marine Natural Capital, and fish stock surveys) on the RV Cefas Endeavour to improve our understanding of wider ecosystem dynamics and challenges, as well as realising cost benefits and efficiencies. Collecting the highest possible quality data will be vital to ensure MPA management is fit for purpose. This will be important not just to hit the 30 by30 target, but to ensure our MPAs are thriving in the years to come.
]]>With the start of a new academic year, this time often comes with big decisions and a lot of uncertainty. Perhaps you’re making decisions on which university to attend, or maybe you’ve just started university and are beginning to wonder what the next 3 years might look like. Often people will start university doing a degree with a good idea of what they want to do, but others maybe aren’t quite so clear, but that’s what makes this time so exciting! We hope that this blog shows that even though you’ve picked your degree, the path you take is unwritten and there are so many opportunities ahead of you.
In this latest blog, we hear from three 2016 University of Exeter graduates, Bek Trehern (BT), Molly Meadows (MM) and Sam Westcott (SW), who all started in the same place, a Zoology course in Cornwall in 2013, and are now all in very different careers all at the Centre for the Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (CEFAS). Although starting out in the same place, with the same degree, they’ve each taken very different routes within marine science. Hear about their experience at Exeter, their path since graduating, their current role and top advice to any new Zoology students.
BT I’m Bek and I am an Engagement and Communications Officer at Cefas. My role involves finding different ways to communicate the science we do and the impact it has to a wide range of audiences including government, non-governmental organisations, local communities and the general public.
MM I’m Molly and I am a Shellfish Scientist at Cefas. I specialise in crab, lobster and cephalopod fisheries. This entails carrying out research and supporting development projects and surveys to ensure that these fisheries have the data they need, including the regular monitoring and analysis involved with stock assessment. I am lucky to be able to attend fishing surveys aboard research vessels to collect data and samples directly.
SW I’m Sam and I am a Fish Health Inspector at Cefas. The Fish Health Inspectorate aims to protect the health of fish and shellfish in the UK ensuring our ability to trade internationally. We do this through a programme of inspections, disease investigations, enforcement, export/import control and collaboration between the other relevant bodies such as the Environment Agency, Marine Management Organisation, Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority, Natural England and Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. As a member of the field team, I spend most of my time out travelling the country visiting sites and taking samples. I’ve also been involved in the Clean Seas Environment Monitoring Programme on board the RV Cefas Endeavour taking samples from fish in our coastal waters.
Why did you choose to study Zoology at Exeter?
BT I knew I wanted to do something that combined my love of the ocean, nature, animals and the environment. As a child, I always wanted to be a marine biologist, but coming from Yorkshire, it didn’t seem very achievable! During careers meetings at school, I was often told that no one becomes a marine biologist, so I started looking for something similar. It was actually my A-level biology teacher who encouraged me to do Zoology. I chose Exeter specifically as I liked that I was able to select my modules and design the degree to suit me, plus it was (and is) renowned for the expertise of the lecturers. I think I really liked that I was going to get good exposure to a range of disciplines. Plus the chance to live in Cornwall was a massive bonus!
MM I chose to do zoology because I was always fascinated by the natural world, spending much of my childhood looking for critters. I loved learning, and the draw of learning everything to do with the animal kingdom was too difficult to resist. I chose Exeter because of the setting; I grew up with family in Falmouth and loved Cornwall. Learning about animals whilst having tangible access to the coast and its creatures was incredible.
SW Course wise, I knew that I was always going to end up on a zoology degree. Growing up on a trout farm in the Yorkshire Dales I was immersed in nature from day one. When I wasn’t running around on the moors chasing things, I was crawling through streams – studying zoology didn’t really feel like a decision, more just a natural progression from what I'd always done as a kid. Why Exeter specifically? I was pretty set on Sheffield until the open day which was partly spent on the beach in the sun while it was snowing back home in Yorkshire. I never looked back!
What was your biggest highlight from your degree?
BT I think it was my third-year field trip to the Bahamas. It was the most incredible experience waking up every day and just heading out into the tropical waters and being able to truly immerse myself in marine biology studying everything about sharks, rays, coral and tropical fish. It was at this point that I thought my dream of being a marine biologist maybe wasn’t that out of reach.
MM One of the strongest memories from my time at Exeter was the variety of modules and the experts leading them. On any given day you could be learning incredible facts about the sensory ecology of a beetle, before going to a seminar to workshop social experiments demonstrating the evolution of human culture, to then rounding off the day by heading to the lab to observe the dissection of a bottlenose dolphin.
SW The lecturers teaching us. Personable and genuine, yet clearly excellent in their respective fields. Another is the location of the course itself, with easy access to the unique Cornish coastline and wild spaces. I also appreciated how this was folded into many modules on the course.
What have you been doing since you left Exeter and what are you doing now?
BT After graduating from my BSc, I continued at Exeter to do a Masters by Research studying lionfish in the Bahamas. After my six-month research period, instead of returning home, I decided to undertake an internship at the University of Western Australia investigating the impact of ocean acidification on various corals and coralline algae. After 2 years, I had to come back to the UK and was hired as an Entertainments and Education Supervisor at the Cornish Seal Sanctuary. In this role, I realised what I enjoyed most was communicating and sharing my love and knowledge of nature and the ocean. I then worked as an Engagement Officer at the Field Studies Council. However, as much as I enjoyed these roles, I knew that I missed being connected to science. In July 2022, I started as an Engagement and Communications Officer at Cefas.
MM After finishing my undergraduate degree, I went on to do a Master by Research studying stingrays in the Bahamas, this was such an incredible experience and I still dream of stingrays almost every night. I then took a career break to walk from Mexico to Canada on the Pacific Crest Trail. Following this intensive lesson in resilience, I joined the civil service faststream where I learnt how science was actually implemented and used in central government. From here I transferred within the civil service to Cefas. I am now a scientist within the shellfish team.
SW After graduating I did some travelling through the US, Mexico, down to Costa Rica and everything in between. I washed up back in the UK for brief a stint as a lumberjack, returned to fish farming and then Stannary bar back in Penryn. I started my masters in Aberdeen studying Fisheries and Marine ecology and focused my dissertation on salmonid aquaculture and genetics. My first role at Cefas was in the Lowestoft lab, in the radiochemistry team testing radionuclide levels in our environment before moving to Weymouth for my current role as a Fish Health Inspector.
What’s your favourite part of your role at Cefas?
BT My current role at Cefas is the perfect combination of science, communication and engagement. I really enjoy taking cutting edge science and turning it into something easily digestible for a non-science audience. I also get to work with such a range of people both internally and externally which makes my role incredibly varied.
MM At the end of last year, I was privileged to go on the RSS Discovery expedition across the Atlantic, as part of the Blue Belt Programme. My role as crustacean and cephalopod Identification Specialist was to identify alien creatures from the deep which very few people had ever heard of, let alone seen in the flesh.
SW The independence. For the most part, I decide when I go where. I have my programme of visits to fish farms to complete within a certain timeframe and it’s my responsibility to see them done, but I get to choose how I accomplish this. I don’t spend much time in an office, and I really appreciate the variety of work we get to do.
What skills and experiences from your degree have been most useful for your career/current role?
BT I think the exposure to different research areas and expert researchers that I had during my degree were invaluable as I’m now able to understand complex terminology and find a way to make it accessible. I also work with a range of people on a day-to-day basis, and I think my time at university set me up to do this well.
MM Well, you could say that as I am essentially a professional rock pooler now, so the regular rock pooling field courses at Exeter were fundamental to my professional trajectory! I also do a lot of statistical analysis in my role, so the modules that introduced the foundations of the programme R and biological statistics at Exeter, I use almost every day.
SW I think the introduction to academia gave me a foundation in this space to go into a scientific organisation. There are methods of collaboration, ways of speaking and certainly ways of working that are consistent throughout the scientific landscape and Exeter introduced me to that.
What advice would you give to a current student who wishes to pursue your career?
BT Try things and take full advantage of every opportunity you are given. I feel like I’ve moved around a lot between research, academia, education and communications to try and get a real feel for what I enjoy doing. It’s so important to enjoy what you do (we spend a lot of time at work), so don’t be afraid to try new things.
MM The best opportunities will arise from curiosity and enthusiasm, so try to keep this at the heart of every decision you make!
SW I think as a student the most useful thing you can do is find what your skills are, what sets you apart or interests you and then try to maximise this. For me, it was utilising my upbringing on fish farms and making the most of this practical experience with highly regarded degrees like the one at Exeter to give me the academic skills I needed to enter a more scientific world.
]]>The deep-sea covers more than 60% of the Earth's surface. Deep-sea ecosystems are amongst the least well understood owing to the combined challenges of remoteness, vastness, and the difficulties of exploring its depths. The ‘deep-sea’ is a catch-all term that encompasses a wide range of habitats from the twilight open ocean, through globe-spanning ocean ridges, the vast rolling hills of the abyssal plains, all the way to 11km down in the deepest trenches. The average depth of the oceans is around 3.8km, and it is estimated that around 80-90% of the species in the deep-sea have yet to be described.
The deep-sea is increasingly threatened by human activities, including long standing bottom fishing practices, nascent impacts from new industries such as deep-sea mining, and inadvertent impacts from plastics and climate change. Since we generally know very little about deep-sea ecosystems, understanding the extent and consequences of any impacts remains very challenging, even for activities like fishing that have occurred for many years. Plastics and other types of waste haves been found in every deep-sea habitat where scientists have looked, mostly recently by our team in water samples from 3000m deep, over 800 nautical miles offshore!
The Deep-seas group at Cefas (Deep-Seafas) is a team of ecologists, oceanographers, biogeochemists, and more who study the deep-sea and provide scientific advice, principally to the UK Government and to international management bodies. We also work heavily with the UK Overseas Territories, and the Governments of Small Island Developing States, whose waters can be almost entirely in the deep-sea.
The work of Deep-Seafas group spans a range of topics, but focuses principally on the biodiversity of the deep-sea, and human threats to its environments. Our recent work includes assessing impacts of fisheries in the northwest Atlantic, mapping brand new areas of UK Overseas Territories marine protected areas, and contributing to management and research of the Southern Oceans. Here are some examples of the Deep-Seafas group recent work:
Understanding the impacts of deep-sea fisheries
Deep-sea fisheries take place between depths of 200 and 2 000 meters, and target species on continental shelves, seamounts and ocean ridges using bottom and deep mid-water trawls, gillnets, longlines and pots. According to UN regulations (UNGA Res 61/105), deep-sea fisheries are meant to avoid what is known as ‘Significant Adverse Impacts’ upon vulnerable marine ecosystems. Even though these regulations were enacted in 2006, with the lack of data we have for the deep-sea, it remains a major challenge to get to grips with what the term ‘significant adverse impacts’ really means in different deep-sea environments.
In partnership with the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organisation and other similar organisations elsewhere, Cefas have been driving forward research into deep-sea ecosystem status assessment and providing advice on how to ensure that deep-sea fisheries can minimise their environmental impact (e.g., Downie et al., 2021). We also recently provided support to the Government of South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands for their Marine Stewardship Council review of the impacts of the Patagonian toothfish longline fishery on deep-sea habitats in this region, helping them to minimise impacts from fishing.
Exploring the Blue Belt
Last year some of the Deep-Seafas team took part in a research survey to Ascension and St Helena as part of the Blue Belt Programme, Discovery Research Vessel Expedition last November (#DY159). The UK Overseas Territories are collectively responsible for Marine Protected Areas that span over 4.3 million sq. km, over 90 % of which is in the deep-sea.
During this survey, we charted new seamounts (one of them accidentally while we were just trying to calibrate some of the ship’s equipment!), collected video data to test new kinds of habitat models, and collected samples of water, sediment and animals from deep-sea areas of the marine protected areas that have never been studied. Only around 25% of the ocean has currently been mapped to modern standards, mostly in shallower areas. Surprisingly, there are still limitations in terms of the technology. Sometimes our satellite maps of the deep-seafloor can be wrong by 1000s of metres, and we are still regularly discovering new entire underwater mountains!
This ability to study the deep-sea is still a serious limiting factor in many places all over the world, because of the high cost and complex engineering needs, and we are actively developing technology that can be used for deep-sea research using small local boats. For example, we are working with St Helena and Belize to trial a specialised underwater camera system that can be used at 1,000 metres, that is also cheap and easy to use. This will give local scientists and managers the ability to collect the data themselves for the first time, data that they need to make decisions about deep-sea ecosystem management.
Influencing negotiations in the Antarctic
Members of Deep-Seafas recently contributed to the CCAMLR (Convention for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources) Ecosystem Monitoring and Management working group. During two weeks of monsoon rains in Kochi, India, Cefas scientists contributed to a diverse range of topics including discussing approaches to methods to use fishing fleets as monitoring platforms, how best to protect vulnerable marine ecosystems such a large-scale icefish nesting sites, and the development of methodologies to evaluate CCAMLR MPAs. Climate change has become an increasingly important topic within CCAMLR and a dedicated CCAMLR workshop will take place in September, providing Deep-Seafas scientists the opportunity to update CCAMLR on a new British Antarctic Survey-Cefas collaboration investigating climate impacts on Southern Ocean fisheries. Deep-Seafas scientists also recently contributed to the second review of the South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands MPA and, having worked in the region for over a decade, will be well placed to support the drafting of an updated management plan for the region’s waters in the coming months.
If you have any questions about the group or proposals for collaborations, please contact either james.bell@cefas.gov.uk or jacqueline.eggleton@cefas.gov.uk in the first instance
Key dates: the Cefas deep-seas group are hosting the next meeting of the UK Challenger Society Special Interest Group on Deep-Sea Ecosystems on 13th and 14th of September
DSE-SIG page: Deep-Sea Ecosystems (challenger-society.org.uk)
Recent papers,including the Deep-Seafas team:
Natural capital refers to parts of the natural environment, such as forests, fisheries, rivers, biodiversity, land and minerals, that provide valuable goods and services to society. Much like human capital (labour, skills and experience), recent reviews recognise that natural capital should be seen as an economic asset that if managed effectively, can bring a whole range of benefits for society and environment.
In the ocean, the natural capital approach helps us consider the value of things like natural resources, fishing, recreation, coastal protection and/or offshore wind. It also helps us see the ocean as an interconnected system rather than individual parts. This helps address a key challenge where a lack of clear evidence and data results in markets and institutions not reflecting the true value of the goods and services that our oceans provides. With increasing pressure on our oceans for food and energy production, effective policy making requires considering a broad range of economic, social, and environmental data to make complex decisions and trade-offs.
Our understanding of the true benefits that our oceans provide is improving through the Marine Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment (mNCEA) programme. Part of Defra’s flagship Natural Capital and Ecosystem Assessment (NCEA) programme and started in 2022, mNCEA is a 3-year programme which aims to deliver the evidence, tools and guidance needed to help policymakers integrate natural capital approaches into policy and decision making for marine and coastal environments. Taking into account the whole marine system, Cefas works alongside its partners the Environment Agency, Joint Nature Conservation Committee, Marine Management Organisation, and Natural England to deliver these projects and outcomes.
Having completed its first year, we are pleased to announce the following outputs are now available as proof-of-concept:
Dr Michelle Devlin, Cefas Principal Investigator for Nearshore Water Quality said:
“The mNCEA programme is an exciting and innovative approach to valuing the many different aspects of our marine environment. We all intrinsically know there is value, but it means many different things to many different people, and the work under this programme will help provide increased clarity and understanding of those values, and how we can protect them”.
Dr Clement Garcia, Lead of the mNCEA Seascapes programme added:
“The first year of mNCEA has laid a the ground work for better understanding and assessing marine natural capital. From this baseline understanding, we are now working on year 2 and beyond projects, and look forward to delivering a more comprehensive understanding of the benefits provided by our marine environment.”
Please reach out to marineNCEA@defra.gov.uk with questions or if you would like to be put in touch with project leads.
We will continue to share outputs from our proof-of-concepts and first year of the programme as these become available. Follow the link to https://randd.defra.gov.uk/ to see all reports.
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