Benyon review pushes for Highly Protected Marine Areas

In June 2019, the Secretary of State announced a review to examine whether and how the strongest protections for areas of sea, known as Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs), could be introduced. The review was led by Richard Benyon MP. It considered the waters for which the Secretary of State has responsibility: the English inshore and offshore, and Northern Ireland offshore zones.

The review recommends that HPMAs are an essential part of the UK Marine Protected Areas (MPA) network for protection and recovery of the marine environment, and the government should introduce HPMAs within existing MPAs.

Other key recommendations:

• HPMAs should be defined as areas of the sea that allow the protection and recovery of marine ecosystems. They prohibit extractive, destructive and depositional uses and allow only non-damaging levels of other activities
• HPMAs should take a whole site approach, protecting all species and habitats within their boundaries
• Government should acknowledge displacement in its decision making, and put strategies in place to support marine uses and avoid creating new problems from moving pressures to other parts of the marine environment.
• Government should adopt the principles of transparency and early, continuous engagement with a range of stakeholders in HPMA site consideration
• Government should use ecological principles to identify HPMAs, and use social and economic principles as a secondary filter
• Government should adopt co-management to agree effective management in partnership with sea users
• Pilot sites should have sufficient geographic spread to cover nearshore, inshore and offshore areas and different regional seas

“Our seas are in an impoverished state and it’s hard for our generation to comprehend how abundant our waters once were,” says Joan Edwards, director of marine conservation at The Wildlife Trusts. “Cod were once as long and wide as humans are tall, and whales, dolphins and basking sharks were many times more common than they are today. We need to let the sea show us what it’s capable of. Today’s publication proposes a vital way of achieving marine recovery. We want to see real ambition from the Government with a commitment to a HPMA delivery plan agreed before World Oceans Day in 2021.

“Existing Marine Protected Areas are limited in their ability to restore habitats and wildlife because their remit to protect nature only extends as far as maintaining the status quo. In these areas, only some of the most damaging activities are prevented and even then, only in some locations.

“In Highly Protected Marine Areas, on the other hand, all damaging activities including fishing, dredging, construction and sea angling would be banned. This new type of designation means that nature could properly recover. HPMAs could be monitored to allow us to understand what a thriving seabed and restored marine life really means. They could set a bar against which other sorts of protected areas could be measured.”

The Wildlife Trusts believe that HPMAs should be designated in each regional sea, in both inshore and offshore English waters, encompassing a range of habitats so that experts can study how recovery works in different ecosystems.

“When bottom trawling was banned from Lyme Bay in 2008, we learnt that recovery in the marine environment can happen, and sometimes much sooner than scientists thought possible,” says Edwards. “Beautiful sunset cup corals blossomed, and pink sea fans grew across the area. By removing all pressures and damaging activities, HPMAs will give parts of our sea the best opportunity to recover to as natural and pristine condition as possible.”

In May 2019, the Government announced the creation of 41 new Marine Conservation Zones (MCZs) to complete a network of 91 MCZs. With the aim of protecting vulnerable and rare habitats and species, these sites added to the rich tapestry of MPAs in the UK. This was progress towards becoming an ‘ecologically coherent’ network – one that is large and well-connected enough to allow an array of habitats to thrive. Well-enforced HPMAs could be designated across parts of these areas and offer the strictest form of environmental protection; they would become the gold standard of protection, the first of their kind in the UK.