Plymouth advises on Marine Bill implementation

The University of Plymouth’s leading marine research excellence is being drawn upon to help put in place the major changes required by the new Marine Bill. University of Plymouth Marine Institute scientist, Jason Hall-Spencer has been appointed to the national Marine Protected Area (MPA) Science Advisory Panel which was announced by DEFRA yesterday. The MPA Science Advisory Panel consists of independent experts across a number of marine scientific fields who will provide scientific advice and guidance to the various projects involved in identifying new UK Marine Conservation Zones, a type of Marine Protected Area. The panel will also scrutinise the planning process and the developing MPA network proposals to make sure that the projects will achieve their conservation goals and deliver the requirements of the new Marine and Coastal Access Act. The nationally advertised positions received a high volume of applicants who through a rigorous recruitment process each had to prove their knowledge of marine systems and experience in the identifications of MPAs and ecologically coherent networks. Hall-Spencer was selected due to his significant contribution to identifying suitable sites for offshore Marine Protected Areas to conserve the UK’s deep water coral reefs. His work, both identifying and publicising the damage that was occurring to these reefs due to deep water trawling, and using an approach to identify closure sites that minimised the impact on commercial fishermen, was important in the selection of a number of offshore deep water MPAs.