Understanding the Distribution of Marine Megafauna in the English Channel Region: Identifying Key Habitats for Conservation within the Busiest Seaway on Earth

The temperate waters of the North-Eastern Atlantic have a long history of maritime resource richness and, as a result, the European Union is endeavouring to maintain regional productivity and biodiversity. At the intersection of these aims lies potential conflict, signalling the need for integrated, cross-border management approaches. This paper focuses on the marine megafauna of the region. This guild of consumers was formerly abundant, but is now depleted and protected under various national and international legislative structures. We present a meta-analysis of available megafauna datasets using presence-only distribution models to characterise suitable habitat and identify spatially-important regions within the English Channel and southern bight of the North Sea. The integration of studies from dedicated and opportunistic observer programmes in the United Kingdom and France provide a valuable perspective on the spatial and seasonal distribution of various taxonomic groups, including large pelagic fishes and sharks, marine mammals, seabirds and marine turtles. The Western English Channel emerged as a hotspot of biodiversity for megafauna, while species richness was low in the Eastern English Channel. Spatial conservation planning is complicated by the highly mobile nature of marine megafauna, however they are important components of the marine environment and understanding their distribution is a first crucial step toward their inclusion into marine ecosystem management

Emerging themes to support ambitious UK marine biodiversity conservation

Healthy marine ecosystems provide a wide range of resources and services that support life on Earth and contribute to human wellbeing. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) are accepted as an important tool for the restoration and maintenance of marine ecosystem structure, function, health and ecosystem integrity through the conservation of significant species, habitats, or entire ecosystems. In recent years there has been a rapid expansion in the area of ocean designated as an MPA. Despite this progress in spatial protection targets and the progressive knowledge of the essential interdependence between the human and the ocean system, marine biodiversity continues to decline, placing in jeopardy the range of ecosystem services benefits humans rely on. There is a need to address this shortcoming. Ambitious marine conservation:• Requires a shift from managing individual marine features within MPAs to whole-sites to enable repair and renewal of marine systems;• Reflects an ambition for sustainable livelihoods by fully integrating fisheries management with conservation (Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management) as the two are critically interdependent;• Establishes a world class and cost effective ecological and socio-economic monitoring and evaluation framework that includes the use of controls and sentinel sites to improve sustainability in marine management; and• Challenges policy makers and practitioners to be progressive by integrating MPAs into the wider seascape as critical functional components rather than a competing interest and move beyond MPAs as the only tool to underpin the benefits derived from marine ecosystems by identifying other effective area-based conservation measures (OECMs) to establish synergies with wider governance frameworks

Up Frenchman's creek: A case study on managingcommercial fishing in an English special area ofconservation and its implications

The Habitats Directive has matured over the years since ithas been implemented. One of the last industries to feel itsapplication is the commercial sea fishing industry: theindustry which according to the Royal Commission onEnvironmental Pollution has the most direct effect on themarine ecosystem. This article outlines one of the earliestapplications of the directive to commercial fishing in theUK's Fal and Helford Special Area of Conservation (SAC),where a national NGO brought pressure to bear on local andnational administrators over failure to implement thedirective in a European marine site. It goes on to describehow different regulators took differing approaches to theirroles and how the lack of enforcement capacity of onestatutory nature conservation agency meant that the NGOhad to threaten a complaint to the European Commissionand potential infraction proceedings against the UK beforethe European marine site was closed to damaging fishingoperations. It then explains how this test case has percolated into UK fisheries management around the UK, leading to the closure of damaging fisheries in Welsh marine sites, policy changes over the management of English sites and a growing debate over whether the proper application of the Directive and other European environmental legislation to marine fisheries is inevitable in the rest of the UK and the European Union. Commercial fishing will undoubtedlycontinue in UK waters but it is likely that those fishingmethods which have a significant impact on the marineenvironment will face an increasing burden of regulationwhere they wish to continue to operate in marine protectedareas

A legal and ecological perspective of ‘site integrity’ to inform policy development and management of special areas of conservation in Europe

The European Union Habitats Directive (92/43/EEC) provides for the designation and management of Special Areas of Conservation (SACs) and requires that impacting activities are subject to ‘an appropriate assessment’ of their implications for the ‘integrity’ of the site. We define the term ‘site integrity’ from a legal and an ecological perspective. We demonstrate that ‘site integrity’ is the maintenance of ecological processes and functions that support the wider delivery of ecosystem services. ‘Site integrity’ can be influenced by SAC management. Management that seeks to support ‘site integrity’ may include the use of buffer zones or connecting areas that extend beyond the SAC site’s designated features. We conclude that ‘site integrity’ and ‘favourable conservation status’ are powerful legal terms that if fully transposed into the law and policy of Member States can enable the achievement of broader European and International goals for marine conservation

Study area.

<p>The study regions of the English Channel and North Sea indicated by dashed lines. Depth contours (30 and 100 m) in light grey. Areas <30 m are white.</p

Stranding summaries.

<p>Graphical summaries of strandings' composition (pie chart), effort-uncorrected trends (country-specific, time-series duration indicated by dotted lines along x-axis) and status (main bar chart), and cause (bar chart on far right) for marine turtles (top) and cetaceans (bottom).</p