Having read the ‘Marine Strategy: Part 1’ recently put up for consultation, my immediate question is why is there no fanfare from government here? Why didn’t this get the big announcement at the United National Ocean Conference 2025, as per the bottom trawling ban proposals?

You can view the document yourself here.

I answer this very easily. Because there isn’t a single proposal within this document to celebrate.

The reading is dire. They don’t disguise just how bad our marine environment is. It lays it bare in a digestible way I doubt many have seen before, and for that Defra should be commended. When it comes to action, it all falls apart.

This isn’t the first marine strategy of course. The document reminds us of the commitments and goals made in 2019, making it wholly apparent how far short of those goals we landed. This is not an unexpected admission of failure, given that period will have been under a different government. One would think this government, therefore, would be keen to use this opportunity to tell us how they are going to go about things different, how they are going to lay out a marine strategy that truly delivers for the health of our oceans.

They don’t.

So what do we have?

More of the same. A few minor tweaks here and there, but certainly nothing that will rock the boat, nor deliver any accelerated rate of improvement.

In 6 years we’ve made just a 9% gain (or 5 species if we wish to get specific) of quota fish species that have gone from biologically unstable in population, to meeting the bare minimum level required to be considered of a ‘good environmental status’ (GES). Meanwhile, fishing pressure continues at the lowest of requirements to rebuild a stock, ‘maximum sustainable yield’ (MSY), which does what it says on the tin and ‘sustains’ low stock levels, it doesn’t recover them.

So we still stay at less than 50% of our quota fish being of GES, i.e. more fish species are in trouble than aren’t.

One would think that a change in harvesting strategy, looking at maximum economic yield (MEY) over MSY may be triggered by such dire findings, but no, alas, we are offered up more of the same that has already failed to deliver as quick as is necessary.

The report has further horrendous findings. It turns out that we don’t know anything about contaminants in our commercial fin fish, because none are tested. This is alarming, considering at the very least the new bluefin tuna fishery in the country, a species known to require testing as mercury levels can be particularly high. The report does mention mercury, in fact it reveals that lead, mercury, copper, zinc and two other contaminants exceed environmental thresholds in our waters, they just don’t test the fish.

Contaminants are confirmed to be high, marine litter is confirmed to be high, our fish stocks are in a dire state, but there’s no testing of the fish and no model aimed to recover larger more resilient fish stocks.

We now have a chance to feed back on these lacklustre ‘more of the same’ proposals, but we can only expect significant change in strategy if we all speak up.

Will you have your voice heard? Be sure to reply to the consultation.