Tens of thousands of hours of trawling in UK protected areas: New satellite data has shown that EU fishing vessels spent over 33,000 hours trawling UK waters which are supposed to be protected from commercial fishing. Despite the government making much of the network of marine protected areas (MPAs) around the UK, trawling is permitted in almost all of them. Hugo Tagholm, from the conservation organisation Oceana, told the Guardian: “Industrial fishing is designed to kill marine life as efficiently as possible … Everything from sharks to starfish are hoovered up by bottom trawling, which can destroy whole ecosystems and empty our seas of life … How can we call them ‘protected’ if we have such highly extractive industries in them?” A government spokesperson said that progress was being made in introducing the bylaws that would restrict fishing in MPAs by the end of the year. Read more on this story here.
Untreated sewage leading to marine species becoming “full of cocaine”: A professor of biology from Portsmouth University has claimed that marine species are “full of cocaine” as water treatment plants cannot cope with the amount of sewage they have to process. This means that sewage is discharged directly into the sea through storm overflows, leading to drugs found in human waste making their way into the sea and being absorbed by marine creatures. The Southern Daily Echo reported that Professor Alex Ford told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “The marine life we’re finding they’re full of drugs, they’re full of contraceptive pills, anti-depressants, anti-anxiety medication, every single marine species we’ve looked at so far is full of cocaine … If you give a fish a contraceptive pill it starts to feminise. “If you give crabs anti-depressants, it changes their behaviour because these drugs were designed to change behaviour.” He added that the amount of untreated sewage flowing directly into the sea had doubled between 2023 and the previous year. Read more on this story by clicking here.
New species of sea creature found off the coast of UK: A new species of sea slug has been found in British waters. The sea slug, which had been given the scientific name Pleurobranchaea Britannica, was found during a survey by the research vessel RV Cefas Endeavour off the southwest coast of England by scientists from the Centre for the Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science (Cefas). The species could not initially be identified and was sent to the University of Cádiz in Spain for further analysis, where it was confirmed as a new species. Ross Bullimore, a scientist who was involved in the survey said: “It is exciting to see that routine fisheries surveys can still lead to such discoveries. … After close collaboration with the University of Cadiz, who carried out a more thorough assessment, we were blown away to discover that we had identified a … new species.” Read more on the Cefas website here.
Ocean temperatures reach record high and bleaching of Australia’s Great Barrier Reef: New research by the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service has shown that the global average sea temperature has reached a new record high of 21.06 C, breaking the previous record of 20.98 C which was set in the summer of last year. The North Atlantic Ocean, including the waters around the UK, were particularly warm, and there are fears that the continuing warming of the world’s seas and oceans will have a serious impact on marine life. Read more on this story by clicking here. In a related story, it was reported in the Guardian that a mass coral bleaching had affected the Great Barrier Reef in the Coral Sea off the coast of Queensland, Australia. The Great Barrier Reef is the world’s largest structure made by living organisms and is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. However, warming waters have seen much of the coral become bleached, meaning the coral expels the algae which gives it its colour. While corals can recover from bleaching, they are more susceptible to disease, struggle to reproduce and can die entirely if the water temperature becomes too high. Bleaching events have happened since the late 1990s, but it is now feared that they are becoming so common that they are putting the long-term health of the entire reef system at risk. Read more here.
Huge herring spawning ground spotted from space: A massive herring spawning ground has been sighted off the west coast of Scotland. It was initially sighted from space after analysis of images from open-source satellites picked up light blue plumes in the water, which turned out to be milt (effectively the sperm of herrings). Underwater photography and a drone were then used to confirm that herring were spawning in the area off Wester Ross. Herring were present off Scotland’s west coast in previous decades but almost disappeared due to heavy overfishing, but the discovery provides evidence that they are returning. The conservation organisation Open Seas has now called on the Scottish government to protect the area from being damaged by commercial fishing and trawling. Read more on this story here.
Salmon news: Multiple stories on salmon have made the news this month, with concerns over salmon mortality in fish farms, a new fish farm on a remote Scottish island and reduced wild catches all making the news:
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- Research published this month has revealed that hundreds of millions of salmon have died in mass die-offs in salmon farms over the last decade. Furthermore, such large-scale mortalities are happening more and more often, possibly due to farms over-relying on technology and warming sea temperatures. The research, which was published in the academic journal Scientific Reports, estimated that mass mortality events had seen 5.14 salmon die in Norwegian fish farms, 5.05 million in Canadian farms, and more than one million in UK fish farms. This means that more than 17 million salmon died in British fish farms, almost all of which are located in Scotland. Salmon farming continues to grow, with around 70 per cent of salmon eaten around the world now being farmed, but the study’s authors stated that during the period they analysed, more than 865 million salmon died prematurely across the world. Read more on this story by clicking here.
- In a connected story, the Guardian looked at plans to build a new fish farm on the small Scottish island of Gigha. The Guardian reported that the Faroese company Bakkafrost have put forward proposals to build the farm, which will create five new jobs – a number the Guadian says is “significant” as the island had a population of just 170. But many locals have objected to the farm, explaining that it would ruin the island’s unspoiled coastline, and also pointed out the many negative aspects of fish farming such as the pollution farms cause, the ecological damage caused by farmed fish escaping and interbreeding with wild fish, and the problems of mass fish die-offs and parasitic infections that many farmed fish suffer. The Guardian points out that despite these issues, and its own claims to protect the environment, the Scottish government has heavily promoted the establishment of salmon farms across the nation’s coastline. Salmon farming is now the world’s fastest-growing food production sector and is now a £1.2 billion industry in Scotland. Read more on this story by clicking here.
- Finally, newly released statistics on the number of wild salmon caught in Scotland have shown that catches are at their lowest-ever level. Provisional figures have shown that 33,023 fish were caught last year, a reduction of nearly a quarter from the previous year. The Scottish Wildlife Trust told the Daily Mail that the news was a “wake-up call” as salmon were not “just a fish; they are a crucial indicator of the health of our rivers.” As well as the threat from salmon farm pollution and interbreeding with farmed fish, it is believed that the reduction of trees and woodland has led to less shade for rivers, warming the waters which harms salmon which rely on cool, clean water to thrive. Click here to read more on this story.