Coastwatch has issued a call to mark broadcaster David Attenborough’s 99th birthday for a halt to dredging in marine protected areas.
Attenborough was 99 on May 8th, the same day as his new documentary, Ocean, was officially released.
“After seeing the preview of that film we walked away filled with awe of the beauty and complexity of our underwater world; sadness and frustration as more and more of our seas are being damaged by ever growing variety and intensity of human activities; and a promise to help turn things around before it’s too late,” Coastwatch director Karin Dubsky has said.
A Spider Crab in Seagrass in Elly Bay, North Mayo Photo: Sam Moran
“It took years to make that Ocean film which ends with David Attenborough standing at a cliff edge,” she has said.
“However you can see both beauty and damage yourself right here in Ireland if you dip into some of our Marine Protected Areas (MPAs),” she said.
The organisation says there is evidence of dredge damage to seagrass areas in Elly Bay near Belmullet in north Mayo, as photographed by Coastwatch regional co-ordinator Sam Moran.
Elly Bay off Blacksod Bay is part of the Mullet/Blacksod Bay Complex special area of conservation.
During a free dive, he photographed meadows of the seagrass Zostera marina.
His photographs show “healthy but thin seagrass with spiny crabs and other sea life, the odd reef hump teeming with life, interrupted by large areas of recently ripped up seafloor with empty shells”, Coastwatch says.
Moran also found and captured images of a lost dredge with the damaged seabed running up to it, it says.
‘This is in one of our prime internationally protected sites which also hosts seagrass, the most valuable carbon store and fish nursery area. Yet we see boats licensed to dredge here. Licensed damage has to stop,”Dubsky says.
Moran said that “this area can recover if we just stop dredging”.
“Looking at the ground and shelter here, there is huge potential for the seagrass meadows to expand. This would provide a return in more shellfish, fish and other sea life which needs healthy seagrass meadows to flourish,” he said.
Coastwatch is calling for protection of seagrass by the Government, with “no more bottom dredging in protected sites with sensitive features so seagrass can do its carbon capture and biodiversity hot spot job”.
It is calling for a switch to managed licensed shellfish diving and gathering, with licenses reserved for traditional scallop and native oyster fishermen.
“The fishermen’s local knowledge and stock protection traditions combined with young blood diving skills and scientific knowledge is the way MPA management can work,”it says.
It is also calling for “adequate monitoring and enforcement as well as a publicity campaign to highlight this transformative change”.
Such a change would “bring more eco tourism, and a top price for the shellfish selected for size right there at the seafloor”, it says.
