Save our Seabirds Trust UK - Newsletter Autumn/Winter 2008

* The RSPCA Mallydams Wood Unit had 24 more birds simply classified as “OTHERS”, 17 of them gulls, not specified as “WEAK”, “SHOT” or victims of “ACCIDENTS & ANIMAL ATTACKS”. Of their total of 271 oiled guillemots, 222 came from the wreck of the “Napoli” in January 2007 and a simultaneous unidentified slick, sent to them by the Taunton RSPCA unit, swamped by receiving 967 of them along with 48 razorbills, 3 Great Northern and one Red-throated divers, a shag and a gannet; the South Devon Seabirds Trust took in a further 72 guillemots. The birds had come from south Ireland, the west of Scotland, Wales and Skomer. The good news was the proof that despite the guillemots’ failure to breed from 2004, their breeding had stabilised. Normal small colonies were reported in the west of Scotland and from Sumburgh Head to the Isle of May on the English east coast. However, the Joint Nature Conservation Committee found it a poor year for them with numbers low at Skomer, Berry Head and south Devon. Another hopeful bit of news is the usual variety of summer and winter migrants visiting the Rye Harbour Nature Reserve, in contrast to other parts of the South East coast. Brent Lodge Bird & Wildlife Trust reported a large number of fresh water birds, mallards and moorhens, but a much smaller tally of seabirds. Burnham House vets in Dover had interesting patients, - 3 gulls with neurological problems, not surprising in view of the virulent hostility shown the species by some members of the public.

Roger Mousselle, Fleur, his wife and daughter Rebecca, not yet two, especially deserve our gratitude for accepting at their Brighton Wildlife sanctuary over 400 fledglings, nearly half last year’s total handed in to carers. Jean Hendry who has led seabird care in Kent has retired and handed over to Sue Skinner and Colin Bradby. Janet Smith in Thanet who has carried out wonderful rescues, fighting her way through nettles and brambles to enter a derelict house to rescue a black-backed gull for instance, has been unable to contribute her casualty figures for 2007 because sadly her husband is very ill.

Herring Gulls Eastbourne pier.
They will fly 30 miles for food, live naturally for over 30 years,
are very intelligent and, when humans permit, friendly.
Photograph by Joan Murray

Old age and ailments are taking a toll of SOS collectors of injured birds so we have been grateful for Trevor Weeks Wildlife Rescue Ambulance Service. The staff have included an enthusiastic lover of gulls, Tim McKenzie. The late, great Nigel Peace of St. Leonards in his tiny garden, mended broken wings with bits of plastic and allowed broken bones to set properly: Tim is doing the same. The question is: FOR HOW LONG WILL THE PLASTIC REPAIRS LAST? Only ringing patients can answer how long the plastic holds. Carla Lane, at her ANIMALINE sanctuary near Haywards Heath, and a few other carers keep permanently injured gulls who live quite happily; but it is estimated to cost £10 a week to feed an adult gull.

WRAS is one of the organisations which has been rescuing oiled swans, Crown property, taking them to the National Swannery at Shepperton in Surrey along with oiled guillemots who weigh less than 650 grams. If they weigh less, the RSPCA does not consider them strong enough to survive the necessary lengthy, complicated treatment to make them fit for life in the wild. Other carers, who ring birds to prove their post treatment survival rates go by different yardsticks, such as its liveliness, not merely its weight; the Swannery is one of them.

However, we should all be glad the RSPCA, funded only by the public and one of our great national institutions, sharing its experience of methods including those for the treatment of oiled birds, as we hope the Mouselle family and other carers do, is constantly improving treatments.

In Sussex the oil this year was put down to the sinking of a freighter carrying a cargo of wood. Ships, over more than a century, like cars have used oil as fuel; even a vessel whose storage tanks and bilge are undamaged, when it sinks leaks oil. When a car crashes, it is quickly removed, not left to pollute or act as a hazard to other cars. We have treated the sea, however, as a rubbish dump; wrecks are left to act as hazards to shipping and the oil in fuel pipes oozes out.

February figures this year, 2008, will show that large numbers of oiled birds came ashore as well in Belgium. Thanks to SOS supporter, Nadine Olivier, we have learnt that the Ostend Bird Protection Association, where she works, received a much wider range of birds in 2007 than we have had over here: - 19 shelducks, 14 lesser black-backed gulls, 4 oyster catchers, 11 kittiwakes, 15 gannets, 40 razorbills, 29 little auks, and many more. Only 1 little auk came in along the SOS stretch of coast so far as we know, - to RSPCA Patcham, so weak and weary that it died.

Photograph by Nadine Olivier, Ostend Bird Protection Association.

Chucking garbage into the marine “dustbin” including leaving torn loose fishing nets to float off, is also lethal. Discarded plastic is deadly to seabirds, turtles and other marine creatures.

The SOS Trust will continue to direct taking injured gulls to wherever, in their geographic area, they are likely to receive the most humane treatment and will not accept an overall diktat that the only option is “putting down”. However, there is no escaping from need for cash and for more serious research. We hope carers will co-operate within present limitations; disputes will solve nothing.

The Joint Nature Conservation Committee has produced a national report for 2006, “SEABIRD NUMBERS AND BREEDING SUCCESS IN BRITAIN AND IRELAND”. They are already working on reports for 2007 and 2008. The 2006 one confirms that breeding has stabilised for a number of species worst affected in 2004-2005, particularly Black-headed, Common and Lesser Black-backed Gulls. Some species nest on the ground or make burrows for their nests and predators take their toll: otters raid Red-throated Divers’ nests on the Scottish west coast island, Eigg; crows have been taking Manx Shearwaters’ eggs on Eigg; mink have been attacking the young of 75 per cent of Common Gulls, of 36 per cent of Herring Gulls and of 33 per cent of Lesser Black-backed Gulls, along with the lack of sand-eels and fish reducing numbers from normal levels. Along the south east coast predators include humans who shoot Gulls with airgun pellets and trap them so they starve to death on roofs.

The cruellest reaction to any injured wild creature is to leave it to suffer. Another factor reducing seabird numbers is lack of resources, - cash, premises, staff, - for Vets and Carers. That means that Herring Gulls during the summer urban crisis and oiled guillemots in winter especially are commonly killed, - “euthanased”. Members of the public do not realise that the following problems can be successfully treated so that the birds can return to the wild: fleshwounds, including those caused by traffic; airgun shots, often hidden under wings; fishing tackle injuries; broken legs which, however, do not prevent a bird from flying and feeding itself.

The distressing annual toll of seabird casualties is testimony to national and local government failure to observe their own, now declared policy of conserving our country’s natural biology. The most familiar living marine wildlife are seabirds. Without support from the Government and DEFRA and adequate financial resources Local Councils are not keen to prosecute those who attract gulls into towns by carelessly throwing food away providing them with an easy supply. The Department for the Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA) is not reacting to the drop in numbers of Herring Gulls, Guillemots, Puffins and other seabirds, common on this coast not long ago, by mounting a massive public education programme on marine ecology which includes them and simultaneously introducing punishments for people who trap and kill them.

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THE SECOND DRAFT OF DEFRA’S “MARINE” BILL

This Draft is only marginally more marine that the first one. It is actually “A BILL FOR PROTECTION OF THE SEA-BED & COAST”. It does not encompass the chief human use of the sea: 95 per cent of the world’s trade is carried on it; much of it passes through the English Channel and south of the North Sea, the busiest seaway in the world, to and from countries other than the UK and Europe. It gives responsibility to the Secretary of State for the Environment, at present, Hillary Benn, for almost all the activities of the proposed new body, the Marine Management Organisation, but there are few obligations.

1. Fisheries have been included in the “Marine Bill” primarily because of their political importance due to the UK’s joining the European Common Market. There never has been an official European “COMMON FISHERIES POLICY” but regulations have accumulated as though one existed. Ann Winterton, Conservative MP for Congleton, clearly explained the politics:-

“The quota system was introduced in 1983, disguised as a tool of conservation, although in reality it was a tool of integration. … a direct result of the integration process to secure the achievement of one European Union fishing fleet in what are now EU waters …”

Alan Reid, Lib. Dem. MP for Argyll & Bute, confirmed that:-

“… those who attend the annual December meeting on regulation of fisheries … come from land-locked countries with no interest in the fishing industry. This annual horse trading must be replaced by those who have a direct interest.”
(House of Commons Fisheries Debate, 6th Dec. 2007, Hansard Column 1059 and 1061)

Horse trading is not afflicting British fisheries merely inside the EU but in Britain itself, a matter entirely ignored by DEFRA.

Under 10-metre fishing boat.
Photograph reproduced by courtesy of the Sussex Sea Fisheries District Committee

Fisheries using boats under 10 metres long have been suffering a slow extinction. When Edward Heath handed British Fisheries, the largest in Europe, to the European Common Market in 1973, only the owners of the large boats were consulted on structural changes. They took four-fifths of the European Common Market’s 12 per cent allocation to this country, leaving the remaining 20 per cent to the owners of the small under 10-metre long boats, the majority. The large boat owners formed Producers’ Associations which now cover the coasts of England and Wales except for the south east. Today some 640 vessels over 10 metres in length hold 97 per cent of these fishing allocations, basing their share on the size of their catches, while 1 per cent goes to large boats not in their Associations: which leaves the 2,379 boats under 10-metres long, less than half the 1973 number, with just two per cent from which to earn a living Earnings are now said to be no more than £400 a week for a crew of 3 to 4 plus fuel and maintenance costs. Members of the Producers’ Associations have been persuading some of them on so poor a living to sell them their leases. EU neo-liberal policy is to promote big business. Early this year Hillary Benn, Secretary for the Environment, and Jonathan Shaw, Minister for Marine, Landscape & Rural Affairs and Minister for the South East, consulting 10-metre boat owners, expressed satisfaction that a number of them wanted to decommission their boats. Small boat fishermen in Hastings and Rye have defied rulings against their setting up their own organisation and have established the National Union of Ten-metre Fishing Producers’ Association (NUTFPA).

Their anger has resulted in their applying for a JUDICIAL REVIEW ON THE ALLOCATION OF QUOTA IN PROPORTION TO THEIR HISTORIC CATCHES. The Review has now just been launched. Their barristers think they will win their case to stop promoting the interests and efficiency of big trawlers as against entrepreneurial freedom for the NUTFPA membership.

If the Bill is to succeed it must address this injustice. The issue is ignored. Successful rearing and conservation of fish stocks demands the co-operation of ALL commercial fishermen. Ahead of the Draft Bill becoming legislation, DEFRA has provided some funding which has produced a few benefits:-

- Fish Stock Monitoring & Assessment
- Sustainable Sea Fisheries Research
- The Fisheries Science Partnership
- The Fisheries Challenge Fund.

Emphasis on science has led to more reliance on the Centre for Environment, Fisheries & Aquaculture Science (CEFAS) in place of ambiguities from the International Council for Exploration of the Sea.

Consultation between scientists and Fishermen, - small boat men? – has been encouraged: a partnership has been set up to assess commercial fishing.

Four years since the matter was first raised by the House of Commons Fisheries Committee there is serious testing of the Eliminator Trawl Fishing Net in use off Rhode Island on the USA east coast: it permits 90 per cent of cod to escape from it and so reduces by 80 per cent pollution caused by dead discards. Is a small boat version to be made available for NUTFPA members? The importance of sandeels to the diet of Sea Birds, not just fish, particularly cod, has now been admitted.

Shoal of sand eels, basic elements of the marine ecology
Photograph by Roy Waller-NHPA-Photoshot

The EU fisheries policy hits seabirds more than fishermen. Seemingly wilful blindness to the intrusions of large Belgian, French, Spanish, Portuguese trawlers has helped to reduce the amount of fish available and disrupted the sea-bed. Seabirds depend on fish, not just as staple food, but to give them buoyancy when they enter the sea. Fish provides their bodies and feathers with oil; without it they would drown. Lack of fish right up from the sea bottom through the column of water accounts for the drop in breeding of some of our commonest native seabirds.

Reproduced by kind permission of the photographer, Richard Bedford
& The Joint Nature Conservation Committee

2. Aggregates & Marine Dredging are next on the list of MMO concerns, taken over like most of its programme by its absorption of the Marine & Fisheries Agency. They are part of an established industry producing minerals and other materials from land as well as the sea-bed. The flint gravel taken from the Channel is highly prized as it makes the best concrete. There are a number of independent companies dredging along the south east coast: those eastwards from Newhaven have combined into the East Channel Dredging Association. Some are foreign-owned; Lord Hanson in 2007 sold his company to the German Heidelberg group.

The “Marine Bill” will permit the present system to continue except that, instead of having to apply for licences to dredge certain areas to the Crown Estate who administer the sea-bed for the owner, the Crown, and to other offices, applications will have to be made to only one – the Marine Management Organisation. As things stand, the Crown Estates hand over to the Treasury the fees paid for licences. The Dredging companies are happy with this simplification.

The SOS Trust view remains, as always, that the benefits of speed in building with concrete should weigh less and that other materials should be substituted. The East Channel Dredging Association, possibly others working with guidance from Natural England, are making an environmental effort; they already use materials from land, e.g. quarries, but also recycle as much as they can from buildings which are demolished. We are surprised that a Government Department concerned with the Environment is not encouraging them and that the Draft Bill put the emphasis on issuing licences to take gravel from the sea-bed.

3. Wind Farms are part of Britain’s answer to the energy crisis. Their positioning has to be carefully regulated in the interests of shipping. Shipping interests operating larger vessels are carefully consulted: smaller vessels, including fishing boats are not; they will have to weave their way through the posts of the windmills planted in the sea-bed. They need help in gaining access to fishing grounds; sand-eel eating sea birds like guillemots and puffins will have to fly low to avoid the flailing arms.

The UK and other countries can claim the right to set up wind farms far beyond the 200 mile national limit on any of their coastal waters, threatening international competition which the EU is supposed to be preventing. The project is now in trouble because of the rising price of manufacturing the turbines. Energy companies expect government subsidies to keep pace with these increases. With the profitability of licences in view, the Crown Estates has offered to meet half the costs of planning applications and work on securing contracts, e.g. connections to the grid. The British Wind Energy Association is now looking for speedy Government action, - DEFRA? – on site assessments and approvals of bids.

DEFRA has not apparently appreciated that oil rigs have been beneficial to the marine ecology. In the areas underneath them where the sea-bed is safe from human devastation, plants and creatures are doing well; colonies of mussels are attaching themselves to their legs. While Wind Farms will not provide as much protection, them may provide some encouragement to sea life.

4. Conservation: is the topic on which the “Marine Bill” is being sold, in line with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds’ 2002 initiative to launch legislation to protect seabirds. It was too narrow to succeed, even now seabirds as part of the marine environment are not much considered by DEFRA.

The New Labour Government has used the subsequent pressure from conservation NGOs as a means of tidying up other legislation for the sea-bed and for integrating fishing more securely into EU administration to which the conservation element would give a cosmetic gloss by its present limited proposal of a small number of sea-bed sites in inshore waters.

A colony of mussels sunbathing in our local coastal waters.
Photograph by Pippa Oliphant.

The concept of Conservation Zones does not take account of the continual movement of the sea due to storms, winds, the ebb and flow of tides, carrying pollutants with it choking sea mammals, birds, any marine creatures with plastic, trapping them in oil and littering the
sea-bed and its plants and wildlife with lumps of it hardened by cold.

5. Coastal Erosion: Combating coastal erosion is currently the responsibility of Local Authorities. On this part of the coast they have effectively done so. Why then is it proposed in this Draft Bill to hand the duty over to the Marine Management Organisation other than to weaken the Local Authorities more than has already happened, in the interests of following EU regulations to impose unelected Regional Advisory Councils?

6. Coastal Access: The public are already using the seaside quite extensively. The estimated cost of the project over 20 years at 2006 values was £45-149 million plus costs of infrastructure and maintenance, a third higher than improving the current Countryside Rights of Way Act. In view of other more urgent economic and social needs, including the sea, it is questionable whether the expansion of coastal access is justified. DEFRA has been unable to predict how many extra visits would be made.

Coastal access is intended to widen people’s knowledge of the sea and its ecology, but education on marine conservation is rated “low”, of the environment “low to moderate” despite pretty photos in an entirely unnecessary booklet. The Save Our Seabirds Charitable Trust for years has been demanding that governments launch a serious educational initiative to compensate for pedagogical lack of interest in, even distaste for, the 70 per cent of the planet which is sea. The Government’s proclaimed revival of marine interest would be more credible if it were insisting that Local Authorities with their responsibility for State education, incorporate into “the 3 Rs”, - reading, (w)riting, (a)rithmetic, - a marine dimension of the rich British nautical history and literature and British technology, for example, the coincidence of time and space by the system of Longitudes, time-keeping through geographical zones, - Harrison’s Chronometer! Well within computer studies!

7. Enforcement: The sea is an international highway. The Secretary of State’s responsibilities are not limited to imposing EU fishing policies on the UK fishing industry as this second Draft for a Marine Bill points out: it covers giving “… directions … appropriate for the implementation of any obligations of the United Kingdom under -
(a) the Community Treaties, OR
(b) any international agreement to which the United Kingdom or the European Union is for the time being a party …”
which includes implementing the Conventions of the International Maritime Organization, - energetically.

The fierce autonomy of the ancient occupation of shipping is resistant to official scrutiny. Arrangements for voyages are complicated, more so than for air freight. Groups of ship-owners, brokers, insurers meet; traditionally it was at the Baltic Exchange in the City of London. They check on positions of their vessels, whose individuality is taken into account as they are not mass-produced in factories like motor vehicles, “write out deals with each other on slips of paper” and proceed to chats about golf and visits to bars. (Financial Times, 26/05/08). The IRA blew the Exchange up. It has been replaced by the “Cucumber” and recently they have been faced with unfamiliar interlopers, - hedge funds derivatives, investment banks, - enticed by the rise in prices of marine freight due to high demand for raw materials, particularly by the Chinese. The financial crisis has diverted the big banks, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Goldman Sachs, to more pressing matters. The Shipping Industry is adjusting to the accompanying decline in freight by its traditional method of laying off ships and their crews. However, as the world’s greatest carrier of trade, it has admitted to substantial air pollution by its use of oil products for propulsion, but not to pollution from emptying wastes into the sea unnoticed and ignored, nor by wrecks. It is the omission of the vast occupation of shipping which makes this “Marine Bill” a nonsense.

The Bill proposes the employment of many Enforcement Officers (EOs), ignoring the numbers of specialist Inspectors already at work, ships’ Surveyors, Inspectors of anti-pollution equipment, or cargoes including their loading and discharging etc. There are not nearly enough of them so that some are switched to unfamiliar work, and they are underpaid. It would seem the Government has money for new employees, but not enough to make the existing ones effective.

(a) We are glad that in this Draft our suggestion is met that the Royal Navy should be officially empowered as British Sea Fisheries Officers under their commitment “to ensure full compliance with UK and International Legislation to protect the marine and other environments”, along with those in command of aircraft or hovercraft in the Army or Royal Air Force (Draft, Part 8 Clause 211 (2)). Thus while the Inshore Fisheries Officers would be responsible for waters up to 6 miles out, the whole UK marine area to 200 miles out would be supervised, - but only for derelictions by fishing vessels.

(b) The role of the Maritime & Coastguard Agency is excluded on grounds that it is responsible only for the safety of shipping at sea. The Coastguard keeps a watch on all shipping passing its remaining main stations at Southampton and Dover and is well aware of the pressures on British fishing by the intrusion of large continental trawlers into our inshore waters. The proposed MMO would be empowered to take over functions of the Department of Trade to which the MCA works. Its relationship with the MCA and responsibility under EU declared, policy for ending these incursions are not mentioned. Prime Minister Gordon Brown indicated a lower priority of marine issues by replacing Dr Stephen Ladyman MP, as Minister of State for Shipping with Mr Jim Fitzgerald MP as a lower-grade junior Under-Secretary of State.

The Coastguard, now chiefly volunteers, - ex-seamen and pensioners, - has completely changed. Full-timers living in coastguard cottages have disappeared. They now use new technologies requiring a lot of training for dealing with more complex shipping and heavier traffic. Watch Assistants, mainly recruited from job centres, have to sit training exams on search and rescue methods and face assessments every year with no rewards. For some the pay is less than for staff at Macdonald’s cafes and they receive poor compensation for injuries from their jobs. It is the Coastguard who call out the Royal National Lifeboat Institution crews, - entirely voluntary. Turn-over for paid and volunteer staff is very high. Conditions have caused strikes and unrest among the MCA staff for over a year. Twice, the technical staff in the Prospect Trade Union have called for the Head of the MCA, Peter Cardy, to resign because of his subservience to New Labour neo-liberal policy of depressing earnings for years, never raising them in line with cost of living inflation.

(c) Unmentioned are Police Launches, based on major ports, - in the south east, ~~Dover and Southampton, - covering many coastal areas. They are usually large enough for inshore work, fast enough to catch most organised offenders and can patrol a radius of about 30 miles. However, they need to be better armed and must have the means of halting a vessel of any size. The Navy or a US style Coastguard service could cover areas in between, carrying small fast boats to take back control of our coastal waters, so avoiding the débâcle of a few years ago when a single Fisheries Protection Vessel was unable to apprehend an intruder in the Channel.

Two questions arise from this wider recruitment of national forces to enforce the Marine Bill. Both the Royal Navy and the Maritime & Coastguard Agency are woefully underfunded and have been for a long time. Draft legislation should make clear the funds that would be available for these increased roles instead of the policy initiated under the Thatcher regime of closing full-time Coastguard stations and reducing the strength of the Navy.

(d) Secondly conservation depends not just on the behaviour of fishing vessels, but on that of the huge amount of international shipping passing UK south east shores carrying fuel oil wastes, garbage and sewage. Seafarers have to be trained to avoid polluting the sea. Nautilus UK has been warning that a review of the IMO Standards of Training, Certification & Watch Keeping must not be used to downgrade UK seafarer training. Thanks to the work of the maritime trade unions, UK standards of training for both ratings and officers are fairly stringent. The EU, however, through its Court of Justice is down-grading crews, eroding national standards of wages and conditions, encouraging employers to undercut each other by reducing them as in the case of the Finnish shipping company Viking which tried to replace national crews with cheaper Estonian labour. Under the Lisbon Treaty, substituted for the EU “Constitution”, the Court of Justice would be given huge powers to undermine national trade unions, - is already using them in Luxembourg.

The 1993 Donaldson Inquiry into Pollution from Merchant Shipping Round UK Coasts recommended effective port state controls for disposal of ALL pollutants by vessels which dock, not achieved after 15 years. Modern large vessels and big ports have been equipped with cranes to lift waste containers ashore; in Marinas there is strict supervision; with older and smaller boats provision is deficient: wastes are still discharged from bilges; oil is still pumped ashore in small harbours with residues washing out of hoses as they are hauled back aboard.

Conservation requires support and rigorous monitoring to see that the Donaldson Recommendations are imposed. The regime for leisure craft can be extended and developed for all professional vessels. The proposed Bill does not address the elimination of marine pollutants.

(e) The best safeguard for shipping, fishing and prevention of deliberate pollution is the mandatory use of TRANSPONDERS. The IMO Convention requiring vessels over 300 tons to have Transponders was adopted in 2000 and had to be implemented by 2004

When an aircraft starts to move it is automatically on the information system via satellite wherever it goes in the world. When a ship starts to move its location and circumstances are notified by the Master and crew. It is not necessarily connected wherever it goes on the oceans.

A Transponder is an electronic device about the size of an electric fire alarm which sends out a tracking signal. Once a tool used only by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and MI5, in the 1939-45 war every RAF plane was equipped with one for defence. Since then every British aircraft has been using Transponders, sending out an identity signal: “Friend or Foe” (IFF), making it possible to monitor every aircraft of any nation. It is therefore possible with advances in satellites and computers, to track continuously every vessel in the world.

As ships come south down the North Sea from the North Foreland they use transponders to contact the Dover Coastguard station which checks on their last port of call, cargo and amounts of fuel oil over 5000 tons, giving them clearance to turn right at Dover and proceed west along the Channel or go south. French coastguards check on ships going in the other direction, - north. Then compulsory contact with shore stations stops.

There is no legal requirement for vessels under 300 tons to make contact with shore stations; small trading vessels and fishing boats use radar and employ satellite navigation like motor traffic on land. The new marinas along this coast cater for amateur boat owners, too numerous for the coastguard system to cope with.

Transponders ensure safety; they could warn of collisions of ships, of shoals, sunken wrecks, of straying off course and into prohibited areas, e.g. one of the proposed Conservation Sites. The vast amounts of merchant shipping in UK waters require Transponders linked to satellites for vessels of all sizes through internationally agreed legislation, as in civil aviation. In autumn 2007, US Judge Newman giving a court ruling on the causes of the sinking of the “Tricolor” in Dec. 2002, urged the IMO to consider introducing an aviation-type of sea traffic control system to reduce risks of collisions. The International Maritime Organization must expand its present Convention to cover far more shipping in a far wider area.

A Transponder must be designed so that it cannot be turned off, as Coastguards tell us they are by large fishing vessels. For the time being, when a Transponder is turned off while at sea it should be assumed the vessel is either sinking or is up to no good.

Bodies monitoring our coasts, Customs & Excise, police etc. would gain a great deal. However, the main beneficiaries would be the Marine Insurance industry which has recently suffered huge losses and fines. The French Government, 7 years after the wreck of the “Erika” in Normandy, has imposed on the oil company, TOTAL, the ship’s owners and the certification authority a fine of £143 million.

(f) A world-class early warning system for merchant shipping mishaps, also requires, as the Donaldson Inquiry recommended 15 years ago, the support of a national salvage system of large tugs around our coasts. When the “Napoli” went down off the Devon coast at the beginning of 2007, the Dutch firm, Smit BV, had to be called in to salvage it. No salvage firm was engaged to save the vessel which emptied its cargo of timber on West Sussex shores; it was left to sink off Portland Bill at the start of the year. Private companies could be encouraged by Government financial concessions to provide the tugs in exchange for a promise to keep them available for UK duties for the next 10 years. The DEFRA Marine Team is apparently not even aware of these exigencies.

(g) DEFRA has admitted in this Draft Bill that neither it, nor its proposed new Marine Management Organisation understands the problems it is now trying to solve. They are expected to learn as they go which is ridiculous when there are a number of specialised bodies who have expert knowledge. They have no basis on which to claim to be a “national” marine institution. Nonetheless there is a great need for one, not just picking and pecking at one bit or another of our coastal waters, but, as we recommended in our first reply to a consultation, for a BRITISH DEPARTMENT OF THE SEA embracing all aspects including international shipping and ports and harbours. The Save Our Seabirds Trust looks forward to further widening of the Bill to incorporate amendments into an over-arching marine Department in recognition of Britain’s immense technological innovations.

Like all Parliamentary Bills it has been considered by an all-Party Parliamentary Scrutiny Committee, Commons and Lords, which has “reservations” about lack of clarity , too much secondary legislation and guidance: the Chairman of the Committee, Lord Greenway, especially mentions in an introductory statement to the Report, the need for action from the Secretary of State for the Environment. “DEFRA needs to think carefully about how the Marine Bill will fit with its existing and future commitment to the European Union...” There is “a valuable role” for marine interests and forums in developing plans. Above all the Committee states: “We are concerned about the current provisions for Marine Enforcement Officers and enforcement of the Bill’s provisions.
The Government must make clear what role the Maritime and Coastguard Agency is expected to play.”

The idea of a Marine Bill should force the Committee and many of the consultees to grasp the enormity of legislating for 70 per cent of the earth and its vital importance: To preserve the earth we have to care for it globally and accept responsibility for our own areas.