Fisheries scientists have long challenged the ‘sloppy thinking’ behind Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). These are too often called for, they argue, ‘on the basis of close to zero evidence’, by people whose real concern is not to conserve marine habitats but to ‘instil a sense of moral panic’. Fisheries scientists sum up their own approach, by contrast, as ‘rational, evidence-based and phased’.

On a scale of one to ten, then, how close to ‘zero evidence’ is well over 5,000 scientific papers on MPAs since 1980? Those who have read even a fraction of those 5,000 scientific papers will find them analytical in content and stone-cold sober in tone. They are anything but ‘romantic’.

The next routine objection used to be that MPAs only work in tropical waters and are no help with conserving mobile species. You hear that argument less these days. Biogenetic studies, a recent innovation, may be conducted in temperate waters or tropical. They allow us to observe how the fish in any given area are inter-related. What they are showing is that a fish we might think of as a single mobile species – cod, say – is actually a conglomerate of many sub-populations, each adapted to a particular habitat. These sub-populations move around less than was thought, so that large MPAs along Norway’s coast, for example, have proved effective in conserving one such population.

Lobsters responded quickly to the establishment of a No Take Zone in Lamlash Bay, Scotland, just as they did off Lundy Island, Devon, England. The size and number of scallops off the Isle of Man rose sharply following the closure there. The number of lobsters and scallops, both, in Lyme Bay, Dorset, has soared since its closure to towed gear in 2008. In this latter case a 2015 report from Plymouth University drew more tentative conclusions about the recovery of benthic habitat more generally. As with Skomer in the 1990s, this may prove a slower and more complicated process than some might have envisaged. But even for fish which do wander ocean-wide, a well-established feeding area or spawning grounds, like sea grass or kelp beds, regularly visited at crucial junctures in its life-cycle, may benefit from protection.   

Another line popular with fisheries scientists is their claim to represent those who understand that ‘these are people’s livelihoods we are talking about’. This will not have occurred, runs the subtext, to anyone arguing for marine conservation. But take just one marine reserve – Lyme Bay, again. Two papers studying the socio-economic impacts of the 2008 closures appeared in 2016 alone – one by Sian Rees at Plymouth University and another from Rebecca Singer of University College, London. This is in addition to an earlier report on the subject from Stephen Mangi. Rees’ work analysed data going back to 2008, whilst Singer conducted 25 interviews around the Bay in the summer of 2016, of which more later.

Given all this research, how to explain, then, the dismissive language used by those who oppose marine protection? As in other contexts, such language operates mainly as a screen behind which people take shelter from issues with which they are either unwilling or unable to engage. Such talk will, of course, be encouraged, and funded, by those who stand to gain financially from a lowering of the tone and poorer understanding all round.

‘Collective learning’, where fishermen and scientists work alongside, is only one of many ways identified in Peter Jones’ Governing Marine Protected Areas (Routledge, 2014) to make MPAs more effective. Jones grew up next to the sea in Poole, Dorset, and is today a marine ecologist, Reader in Environmental Governance at University College, London. His book emerged from years of engagement with MPAs. It compares the effectiveness of different management regimes not only in one country or region but around the world.  

Making Marine Protected Areas More Effective

The emphasis in Governing MPAs is less on making the case for them as one way, among others, to restore the ocean to health. That argument has been won. The question now is a more practical one: how to make MPAs more effective.

Jones examines 20 case studies from around the world, from a range of different contexts. He has looked at No Take Zones and Partially Protected Areas, at reserves which have succeeded, and at those which either have not or where the outcome is still unclear. He has looked at countries with developed and less well-developed economies; countries with tropical and temperate climates, at reserves where a firm legal framework is in place and those in which that framework is weaker. Each case must be studied on its own merits. Any comparisons between them must then be made on a rigorously empirical basis.  

From close study of 20 reserves, he has derived five broad categories of ‘incentives’, which have all been shown, under different circumstances, to make a reserve more effective. The five incentives are economic (harnessing market forces), interpretative (awareness-raising), knowledge or ‘collective learning’ (where fishermen and marine biologists collaborate on research), legal (political will, infringements punished) and participative (involving as many parties as possible in decision-making).

Jones’ familiarity with the management structure of so many different reserves makes his book refreshingly clear-sighted about what he calls ‘governance challenges’. Consensus is not always possible. Ecologists, he argues, should be clear about their motives with themselves and others from the outset. Conservation aims and utilitarian ends may contradict one another and we should not shy away from this. A well-informed societal concern about the state of the oceans is now a significant factor and there is no reason why this should not influence the uses we make of our seas. When the science indicates that No Take Zones would work, for example, as they would in Lyme Bay, they should be established.

In dismissing such calls as ‘romantic’, the industry only shows itself to be lagging behind that wider unease about the state of the marine environment. At the same time, environmentalists need to be aware that imposed solutions, or ‘fortress conservation’, carries its own risks. Just as there can be a ‘tyranny of the local’, in which irresponsible ‘small-scale’ fishing practises continue, so there can be a failure by marine biologists to engage creatively with those local fishermen who can and want to help.

Political Will Is Always The Decisive Factor

Jones’ solution is a ‘balancing act’ in which the strong hand of the state, the ‘invisible hand’ of the market and the ‘democratic hands’ of the people are effectively combined. His findings, across all variables – economic and environmental – show that NGO or private participation may take many useful forms, but political will is always the decisive factor. The state may devolve power but should never relinquish it. When conservation and utilitarian aims cannot agree, there has to be an overarching authority, committed to wider-scale objectives, which is prepared to make a decision in a particular context and enforce it with legal sanctions.  

Developed over many years of close observation around the world, this template was applied to Lyme Bay by Rebecca Singer, (a student of Jones’), through 25 extensive interviews over the summer of 2016. Through its application of Jones’ empirical approach, Singer’s report raises questions worth considering. The Reserve Brand, for example, is one of several innovations introduced by the Blue Marine Foundation. It is a scheme whereby supermarkets and other outlets agree to pay more for fish from the MPA because newly- installed chilling facilities can guarantee freshness.

Singer notes that none of the fishermen she spoke to were using the Reserve Brand to ‘catch less for more’, even though its aim was to reduce fishing pressure. She notes that the overfishing of whelks from the western end of the MPA continues. And that the quota for boats which have signed up to the voluntary agreement were set at the top end or above what they were already catching.

None of this is to deny what has been achieved. A dredger operating in the MPA was recently fined £37,000. As of 2011 the Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authorities (IFCAs), of which there are two in Lyme Bay, have patrol vessels and much improved means of gathering information, both through satellite, radar, VMS (Vessel Monitoring Systems) and through good old-fashioned local intel.

Singer also reported on consultations to lift the order (or Statutory Instrument (SI)) imposed in 2008, which originally closed sixty sq. miles of the sea-bed to dredgers. This is exactly where the importance of Jones’ case-by-case approach becomes clear. As already mentioned, the MPA falls under the jurisdiction of two IFCAs. This allows ‘locally tailored management’ by people who are very familiar with the site. Power has been devolved.

And this can work well. Rob Clark heads the IFCA for the eastern half of the MPA. With a background in ecology, he argues that managing the site through byelaws allows him to add to the protected areas already in existence. When I ask him how much scope there will be for dredging to resume between the reefs: his answer is quite clear: ‘None’. The closed area will remain closed.

It’s worth adding that Rob Clark’s ‘Southern IFCA’, which oversees inshore waters from the Hampshire / Sussex border to the Dorset / Devon border, has a different history from its western neighbour, the ‘Devon & Severn IFCA’. As local fisherman Dave Sales put it to me: “The industrial fleet is not a big political player in this part of the country. So the byelaws have evolved differently here. They favour the smaller boats which do less damage.”

When I contact Tim Robbins at the Devon & Severn IFCA, which has authority for the western end of Lyme Bay, however, the tune is different. Neither should this come as a surprise. The industrial fleet is a serious political player further west, where the byelaws have traditionally favoured the larger boats.

“It is not possible to say that nothing will ever change in the area, even with the SI still in place changes could have been made to management,” Mr Robbins informs me. “There may be pressure in the future from the mobile gear fishing industry to have areas where there are no features of the site present to open it again to fishing.” (He also understands that a new review of the SI has been requested by ‘local fishing interests.’)