As per the press release when Marine Spatial Planning arrives, it will be of the utmost significance for all human activities at sea – including fishing – at least in EU waters. The planning has the potential to carry both risks and benefits. The benefits are a way of reducing the potential for chaos, as new offshore developments like wind-farms and marine protected areas, jockey for marine space with other seabed, water column and sea surface users, like aggregate dredging, shipping and of course, fishing. A rational, evidence based, fair and open system of planning could carry great advantages over an unplanned law- of- the- jungle approach.
Apart form the benefits it has some particular dangers such as the wide dispersal of fishing activities often means that a crude indicator, such as £ per sq metre of different economic activities, will almost invariably put fishing at a disadvantage. Moving fishing aside to make space for higher-value-per-mere activities would be a built in feature of such an approach. Unless unchecked it would eventually lead to the displacement of fishing to such an extent that this important contributor to the country’s food security would be seriously affected.
This is a ground-breaking initiative that brought together many of the stakeholders that would be affected by marine spatial planning. Shipping, oil and gas, wind-farm, nature conservancy, scientific, recreational, as well as fishing interests were amongst the stakeholders who met with representatives from the Commission and national governments around the North Sea.
UK Fisheries Minister Huw Irranca-Davies gave the keynote speech and made the important point that whilst the integration of decision-making in fisheries with broader environmental policy was inevitable, there were already examples of good practice and cooperation between sectors that might at first sight to have conflicting interests.
