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Happy World Seagrass Day! You may find yourself thinking, water what is Michelmores on about? Whilst not yet receiving the international Hallmark holiday status it sea-derves, 1 March is a recognised day for shell-e-brating seagrasses and raising awareness for the importance of seagrass in our ecosystem.
What is seagrass?
Seagrass is a flower plant – in fact the ONLY flowering plant that lives in the sea, pollinating whilst underwater. Known as the “lungs of the sea”, seagrass meadows can absorb carbon dioxide 35 times faster than tropical rainforests and are key players in the fight against climate change, as well as being a core component of marine biodiversity – acting as a nursery, habitat and feeding ground for a multitude of marine creatures. Particularly important to us, as a firm with a strong presence in the South West, is seagrass’s ability to not only fight climate change, but also mitigate its effects – in particular sea level rise. Seagrass has dense root systems which binds sand and sediment, anchoring the seafloor and helping prevent coastal erosion.
It also acts as a clumsy perfect segway to review the recent updates to the Marine Net Gain (MNG) consultation.
UK Marine Strategy
To provide some background (for those who for some inexplicable reason missed our World Seagrass Day articles last year), the Marine Strategy Regulations 2010 (the Regulations) required the UK to develop a UK Marine Strategy (the Strategy) in order to achieve Good Environmental Status (GES). Under regulation 4(1) of the Regulations, DEFRA was obliged to achieve GES by 31 December 2020.
The Strategy is developed in a three-part cycle, which renews every six years. The first stage assesses the current status of UK seas and sets targets for the next six years (a summary of the assessment updated in 2018 can be found here), whilst the second stage sets out the monitoring program. Within this current cycle, DEFRA was consulting for stage three – which was due to set out the policy measures required to achieve or maintain GES for UK Seas over the next six years. In 2021 DEFRA had launched the consultation on their proposed programme of measures (POM) for this third stage.
The proposal covered 11 identified marine ecosystem components – everything from whales to litter – and described additional measures that had been and were planned to be introduced to achieve and maintain GES for each of the 11 ecosystem components. The DEFRA consultation requested feedback from stakeholders on the POM with specific questions, including whether stakeholders believed the measures were sufficient, what other measures were required, and what other human activity-related pressures were not addressed by the proposed measures.
Investigation
DEFRA received responses from a diverse stakeholder group, including fishing organisations, environmental organisations, advisory groups, the energy industry, and individuals, and was due to publish the update on the Strategy by 20 December 2024. DEFRA failed to meet this deadline, which prompted the Office for Environmental Protection (OEP) to launch an investigation on 8 January 2025 into DEFRA’s suspected failure to achieve GES of marine waters. The OEP believes that DEFRA’s failure to publish the update to the Strategy on or before the December 2024 statutory deadline, and, thereby, failing to issue a formal assessment confirming whether the 2020 for achieving GES was met, suggests that DEFRA did not take the necessary measures to achieve GES, and had not evidenced any clear plan to ensure that GES could be achieved as soon as possible.
Strategy report
Following this, on 29 January 2025, DEFRA published their update to the Strategy.
For each marine ecosystem component, the report summarises the original status and targets identified in stage one, as well as detailing how progress is to be assessed, before confirming whether GES has been achieved, and then listing the stage three POM that would be used to achieve targets. It also highlighted any exceptions that have been applied.
GES was achieved for contaminants, contaminants in seafood, eutrophication (the harmful growth of algae or plants due excess nutrients in the water, for example by agricultural run-off), and hydrographical conditions (the physical features of the marine environment, such as salinity and temperature) only.
GES was partially achieved for whales, seals, pelagic habitats (open water that is home to plankton – aka the foundation of the marine food web), food webs and underwater noise.
GES was not achieved for marine litter, commercial fish, wild fish or marine birds. The situation for marine birds was stated to have been declining since 2012, but the report explained how commercial and wild fish have demonstrated an improvement since 2012, although still fell short of achieving even partial GES.
GES was also not achieved for benthic habitats (aka, the seabed); however, an exception was applied under regulation 15(2)(e) of the Regulations, with DEFRA arguing that due to the nature of the seabed, recovery of these ecosystems are often slow, particularly for cold water and deep-sea species and therefore the collective impact of the measures will take years to show.
GES was also not achieved for non-indigenous species (NIS), but under 15(2)(a) and 15(2)(e) of the Regulations, an exemption was applied as DEFRA argue that this particular area is incredibly difficult to control given the transboundary nature of the issue, and difficulty differentiating between the increase of NIS because of climate change (making UK water more accessible to NIS) and those introduced via human pathways.
The Annex to the report sets out the new measures for each marine component that have been introduced since 2015, and those that will be introduced.
Stage three summary
The summary of the report provides a breakdown of the main themes running through the stakeholder answers to the consultation questions.
A popular theme running through these answers was an appeal to confront the imbalance between lengthy administrative processes and the development and implementation of the Strategy.
This was demonstrated in the responses to the question of whether the proposed measures were sufficient to achieve GES, to which most respondents commented on the fact the Strategy is under-funded and under-resourced. Specific comments highlight an excessive reliance on the Fisheries Act 2020 to deliver GES, without means of implementation or legally binding targets, and the fact that Marine Protection Areas required more stringent management, and increased enforcement around pollutants (such as sewage).
The summary also publishes some of the frequent suggestions for additional measures. The most frequently suggested new and additional measures were related to fishing and include:
- effective implementation of detailed Fisheries Management Plans for stock recovery (including for prey species);
- measures to protect benthic habitats from bottom-towed fishing gear;
- financial assistance for fishers to more sustainable practices;
- a review of the Fisheries Act (Northern Ireland) 1966; and
- remote electronic monitoring to inform effective marine management.
Respondents also listed a range of pressures that they did not consider had been addressed by the POM. These include climate change, the impacts of bottom-towed fishing gear, pollutant input from untreated sewage and sewage run-off, and the expansion of offshore energy and other infrastructure.
When responding to questions around the exceptions used for areas that had failed GES, some stakeholders expressed understanding that exceptions could be justified given the nature of the marine environment and difficulties with monitoring and controlling it. However, the majority of commentary around this subject, especially when related to marine birds and their consistent decline, demonstrated a frustration with the use of exceptions, suggesting that exceptions undermined the drive towards achieving GES, and exceptions should only be used if all other actions and efforts had failed.
The strategy process
Consultees also fed back on the existing delivery programme of the Strategy suggesting improvements, including:
- providing for the additional resources and funding that is required for each measure to be effective so actions would not be limited by or developed in response to limited available funding;
- enhanced communication and coordination across the UK devolved government;
- the need for commitment to quicker action and more effective use of existing evidence in each program to review and adjust delivery programmes accordingly; and (topically)
- less resources channelled into drafting the Strategy, when instead this should be refocused into delivering the measures themselves in a timely manner.
Another repeating theme was that greater reference to the challenges of climate change to achievement of GES was required.
Finally, some respondents also expressed enthusiasm for a government commitment to the non-regression of environmental standards, in order to maintain confidence in the Strategy, as well as the need to set out a clear path to delivering the 2030 State of Nature target.
In response to this feedback, DEFRA have claimed to have made significant alterations to the POMs and have also included additional detail on the measures being taken. They presented a more streamlined POM document since the consultation, reflecting the feedback that a more concise clearer narrative using less resources was required.
What’s next?
Following publication, DEFRA has already been seen to be implementing some of the new measures, publishing guidance on reducing marine noise, as well as issuing interim guidance for the Marine Recovery Fund, a mechanism to be used by offshore wind developments to compensate for activities that impact marine habitats, in particular activities that affect birdlife and the seafloor – key issues in the Strategy. Following this, the whole six year cycle will begin again, alongside the measures described in the current Strategy.
That’s it?
Kelp! This doesn’t feel very celebratory for such a special day. We can take comfort that the Welsh Government announced an additional £100,000 to go towards the National Seagrass Action plan earlier this year and, earlier this month, the Environment Agency (EA) updated the “Working with Natural Processes Evidence Directory” summarising the latest evidence in favour of natural flood management, which of course features seagrass in a starring role in the Coastal Section. This work is in support of the EA’s Restoring Meadow, Marsh, and Reef initiative, which functions to combat climate change through the restoration and protection of coastal blue carbon habitats.
Well done for making it to the end! Here’s a photo of me swimming with humpbacks in Tonga, which I appreciate is more a reward for me than for you, but I need to shoehorn this image into at least one communication a year, so – unlucky, seagrass fans!
Photo credit: Darren Jew
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