Clidive’s Environmental Officer – and Biodiversify consultant – Gus Fordyce provides an expert insight into what needs to change behind the scenes if we want to ensure a healthy UK marine environment for the future.
We’re all aware of the impact of warming oceans on the world’s coral reefs. Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has been hit by six mass bleaching events over the past decade. This year, both the GBR and its western cousin Ningaloo suffered widespread heatstress – an uncommon occurrence.
But it’s not only the clear, blue tropical oceans that are affected: such heatwaves – where ocean temperatures stay unusually hot for periods of at least five days – have now become a common and intensifying occurrence in the UK too.
Sea surface temperatures in north-west Europe are reaching record highs and the western English Channel has had almost continuous marine heatwave conditions for the past two years.
This year, Clidive, like many local divers and fisherfolk, experienced firsthand a symptom of these warming seas – a boom in the common octopus population. While these unusual shifts can make for exciting encounters in nature, marine heatwaves can be as costly as storms or floods, and pose an existential threat to ocean health.
Octopus encountered on a recent Clidive trip to Plymouth.
The UK’s fisheries, aquaculture and marine tourism industries all need functioning ecosystems to keep supply chains flowing and sustain employment. At the same time, healthy marine ecosystems provide natural – and free – storm protection. If they degrade, risks cascade from supply chains to local economies and national infrastructure. The risks are felt by the marine industries that depend on the blue economy, yet how we are responding as a society remains fractious.
Who’s in charge?
Coastal seas are managed as Exclusive Economic Zones, extending 200 nautical miles from the shoreline. No single enterprise owns part of the sea; access and use is permitted and controlled by the UK government. Therefore, only the government has the mandate and authority to coordinate action and create the research infrastructure, technological frameworks and marine spatial planning that make such investments viable.
But the efficiency of its Marine Management Organisation leaves much to be desired. The current regulatory framework disincentivises large-scale ecosystem restoration by subjecting it to industry-style bureaucratic barriers.
Using a boat to lay seagrass anchor beds or seed new oyster reefs requires the same licenses as dredging up to 10,000 cubic metres of sand.
Targeted marine resilience measures are needed and practical solutions need to be in place, whether through insurers funding reef restoration or fishery managers coordinating seasonal closures. The government should be facilitating the role of communities in managing their local marine ecosystems.
Every year, Clidive visits Scotland’s first voluntary marine reserve in St Abbs which stands as an example of how marine users can collaborate to protect the seas. Yet 40 years after its establishment, it remains the only one of its kind in Scotland.
Where voluntary initiatives don’t work, statutory approaches are needed. But damaging activities are permitted across the UK’s EEZ, which weaken our network of marine ecosystems and make them more vulnerable to marine heatwaves.
The critical role of marine spatial planning
We must embed marine heatwave risks into marine spatial planning, which aims to optimise seascape management by mapping vulnerable and exposed habitats so that we can prioritise the protection of high-value biodiversity and highlight key sites for restoration.
Marine spatial planning is an adaptive, empowering community-led process that offers proactive risk reduction rather than reactive crisis management, and uses a holistic approach to maximise ecological resilience.
Adequately balancing climate adaptation and coastal development is an imperative for our future as an island nation. We have a clear choice: invest now in targeted marine resilience or pay exponentially more later. Yes, it requires significant upfront investment but prevention is far cheaper than the alternative.
The bottom line
Our ocean is running a fever, and unless the government takes the temperature seriously, soon we’ll all start to feel the symptoms.
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