This is the first such treaty in over 40 years, the last being the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea in 1982.  I remember studying this as an A level student, and around that time my grandfather bought me a copy of the Times Atlas of the Sea, telling me that as a geographer I “really ought to be interested in this sort of thing”. 

I took a while to be won over, but in time I found myself utterly absorbed in an alien world of submarine mountain ridges, abyssal plains, tsunamis and deep-sea trenches.  The latter held a particular fascination as I wondered what surprises and horrors might be found in these strange, hostile places. 

It's not just in the physical extremes like depth and remoteness that makes our ocean environment so captivating.  It’s the sheer age of marine life that constantly astounds me.  Animals first came ashore just over 350 million years ago, although scientists believe simple plants had colonised the land a little earlier.  Life in the sea has been around for 3-4 billion years, ten times as long.  Little wonder it has evolved some extraordinary forms.  Take the otherworldly bioluminescent octopus, the barreleye fish with its translucent head and visible brain, the dream like “Pink see-through fantasia” which shows off all its internal organs.  There are beauties like the exquisite leafy sea dragons and technicoloured nudibranchs, horrors like the vampire squid and the outright hideous blob fish, a gelatinous, muscle-free ghoul that feasts on any crustacean unfortunate enough to float into its grisly mouth.  Life in our seas is about as varied, bizarre and extreme as anything the human imagination can conjure up.

But this is just the tip of the iceberg

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency (NOAA), 91% of ocean species are yet to be classified and over 80% of our oceans remain unmapped, unobserved and unexplored.  Estimates of species diversity range hugely but are typically over 2 million, and up to a thousand new species are described by scientists every year.

Humanity doesn’t have a good record when it comes to our treatment of natural resources that appear to offer limitless bounty.  It took us a mere century to exhaust many of the Earth’s major fisheries, or to wipe out the Passenger Pigeon, once the world’s most numerous bird species. Our rapacious destruction of the Amazon and other rainforests follows a similar pattern of smash and grab.  So it is a major triumph that the World’s nations have come together to agree a plan to protect 30% of the Earth’s oceans by 2030, and the incredible life they support.  Fishing, mining, sharing of genetic resources and indigenous rights are just a few of the highly complex areas that had to be worked through to achieve this monumental step forward.

Now comes the hard bit – making it happen. 

To get a sense of the challenge, it is worth asking how much of our oceans are already protected.  The UN World database on Protected Areas (MPAs) lists over 15,000 MPAs covering 10.6 million square miles, or 7.5% of the ocean.  But these include places where protection is pretty weak, or where commercial fishing and even mining are allowed.  If we discount these “paper parks”, the Marine Conservation Institute shows only about 5% is truly protected.  So in the next 6-7 years, we need to expand this protection six fold! No small challenge.

Wealthier countries that rely less on primary industries can be expected to lead the charge, and many are making notable progress. 

How are we doing in the UK? 

In the last 12 years we have designated a suite of Marine Conservation Zones.  Adding these to the various other designations, our government’s advisor the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (JNCC) states that 38% of UK water within 12 nautical miles are protected.  Reality paints a rather gloomier picture though.  Work by Wildlife & Countryside Link recently showed that only 8% is effectively protected – in other words, legally protected and properly managed.  We are still a long way off the target.

A wealth of research has shown that by far the best way to ensure the recovery of our marine environment is through Highly Protected Marine Areas (HPMAs), where any activity that could have a negative impact on the natural environment is banned.  Evidence from around the world shows that not only can fish stocks within HPMAs show remarkable recoveries within a few years, they spill out into the surrounding seas and improve fish catches there.  Sea floor habitat can bounce back too – four years after the 64 sq mile closed area was designated in Lyme Bay, reef species could be seen recolonising the sea floor in abundance.  The area has become an attraction to recreational divers and other activities too.  Protecting marine habitats and fish stocks is generally good news for local economies and ultimately commercial fishing, as well as for wildlife.

The UK has been slow off the mark with HPMAs, and for many years there was only one – a tiny area off Lundy Island.  Then in 2019, the Benyon Report made a strong case for HPMAs and recommended a process to start designating sites around our coastline as soon as possible.  Five were put forward from Devon, including areas around Wembury, Lyme Bay Deeps, Start Point, Bideford to Foreland Point and an extension of the existing area around Lundy.   After a process of whittling down, a list of 30 potential sites around English coasts was put to government.   

We were more than a little disappointed when the government announced last year that only five sites were being taken forward for public consultation, with not a single one in Devon or the entire South West.  And last week we heard that only three of these will be designated - Allonby Bay off Cumbria, Dolphin Head in the English Channel and North East of Farnes Deep in the North Sea.  None of these sites is as large as 500 sq km and Allonby Head is less than 30.  Together they amount to a tiny fraction of 1% of our seas, with Allonby Head barely a pinprick on a poster-sized map.  

And what of the two sites not designated? 

Both are important habitats that are being damaged by commercial fishing and scallop dredging.  Notably, the Secretary of State declined to designate one of them on the grounds of it being damaging to fishing interests.  Even Allonby Head was reduced in size to allow for recreational angling.  So it would seem that HPMAs are only to be designated where there is no impact on any existing human activity – in other words, where a designation wouldn’t change anything.  There are no plans to designate any more HPMAs in the foreseeable future.

If we are serious about bringing 30% of our seas into recovery, we have got to turn current thinking on its head.  We need to designate large HPMAs, thousands of sq km in size, which illuminate those depressing grey marine maps like beacons of hope.  We need to locate them where they are most needed to safeguard our best habitats and put fish stocks into recovery, not scrabble around to find quiet corners where there is least resistance from vested interest.  And we need to protect them properly, so they are worthy of the name. 

It will always be easier to evidence loss through stopping an existing activity than it will be to argue the benefits of something that has yet to start.  And a risk-averse approach, that weighs up the pros and cons on the basis of arguments about financial loss and who shouts loudest, is always going to be heavily weighted in favour of the status quo, no matter how destructive it is.  We need a new way of thinking – bold, long term, science based.  We need leadership by visionaries, not bean counters.