“Anglers face lock out from new Marine Zones” - my current understanding and how much of a worry is this?

I would hope that if you are reading this as an angler who likes saltwater fishing in the UK, you have at least heard of the “Benyon Review into Highly Protected Marine Areas” that has reared its head this week. Like most saltwater anglers I am sure, when I read the newspaper headlines I nearly choked on my coffee. As the Angling Trust have put it on their website here: “Anglers face lock out from new Marine Zones”. We can rant and rave all we like about these rights we are meant to have to be able to go fishing and so on, but the simple fact is that as recreational anglers we are having some kind of impact upon the natural world. I would hope that most saltwater anglers are all in favour of helping to make the natural world a better place, but lumping us in with the commercial sector as this recent review/report is doing? Headlines are often just that, and a percentage of people are always going to jump to immediate conclusions and start ranting and raving about it all - but if you go looking there is often a lot more to it. I don’t know a whole heap about this Marine Zone stuff yet, but I did a little digging and here’s where I am at right now……………….

By the way, if you know nothing about any of this, have a look on the Angling Trust website here, and I have copied and pasted some of their words here: “Recreational sea anglers in England face the prospect of being locked out of some of their favourite fishing grounds if Ministers go ahead and implement the recommendations of the Benyon Review of Highly Protected Marine Areas which was published this week. Despite recognising the economic importance of recreational sea angling and highlighting the importance of meaningful stakeholder engagement and partnership working, the Review Panel did not include any angling representatives nor anyone with a detailed knowledge of the sector. Consequently, low impact recreational fishing was treated as having equivalence with damaging industrial practices such as trawling, dredging and drilling. With 46 sites identified in the report as candidates for a network of new Highly Protected Marine Zones covering up to 10% of English seas, anglers could see themselves no longer able to fish in popular places such as Poole, Langstone and Chichester Harbours in the South; the Dogger Bank, Wash, North Norfolk Coast and Blackwater and Crouch Estuaries in the East; Plymouth, Falmouth and the Severn Estuary in the South-West and Morecambe Bay in the North-West. The Review, chaired by former Fisheries Minister Richard Benyon, acknowledges that the UK currently has a range of protections in place through a network of 355 Marine Protected Areas, which offer protections for a designated feature or habitat within their boundaries. The proposed Highly Protected Marine Areas would go further: ‘...by taking a ‘whole site approach’ and only permitting certain activities within their boundaries such as vessel transit, scuba diving and kayaking. Activities that could have a damaging effect on habitats or wildlife, including fishing (both commercial and recreational), construction and dredging would be banned. The Review claims the introduction of such areas could lead to a significant biodiversity boost for our seas by giving our marine life the best chance to recover and thrive’.In its evidence to the panel, the Angling Trust highlighted good practice from around the world where far from excluding recreational fishing many marine protected areas are actually designated as recreational only zones in acknowledgement of the light impact that rod and line fishing has on fish stocks when compared to commercial netting or trawling. Furthermore, the presence of sea anglers in these zones serves to provide a system of enforcement and monitoring which would otherwise be largely absent.

So my understanding is that we are talking about a review and a proposal here. We are not suddenly about to be shut out from shore fishing along whole stretches of the coastline, but if we do what we tend to do as UK saltwater anglers - bury our heads in the sand and rant about how it’s our right instead of effectively working together - then there could well be serious ramifications way down the line. I believe that this review is talking about “46 sites identified in the report as candidates for a network of new Highly Protected Marine Zones” and they are looking for five to run as trial zones. No saltwater angler can possibly be against logical measures which look to safeguard the marine environment, but I have to come back to recreational anglers being lumped together with the commercial sector in this review, and the worrying fact that the Angling Trust and therefore the recreational fishing sector tried to get a seat at the table for this review but were unable to.

There is no point me banging on and on about how unfair this all sounds at the moment, because even if it potentially is bloody ridiculous, we don’t seem to be close to anything actually happening yet and of course most people or indeed anglers are jumping on the headlines. The Angling Trust tell me that they are heavily involved with formulating various plans of action to try and get us anglers properly heard and represented, so please keep your eyes and ears to the ground and I will obviously keep you posted on here when I have more news or when we need to write and email and campaign and so on. It might be a bunch of headlines at the moment, but we seriously need to keep on top of this and I find it rather bloody scary that this Benyon Review is lumping us recreational anglers in with the commercial fishing sector. The whole report is here if you want to wade through it, and in the meantime, you all have a good weekend and please stay safe………………..