On Monday I met a mermaid who was no mere maid, saw that bloke off the telly and spotted the most unlikely revolutionary journalist – and it was jolly cold. It was probably jolly cold everywhere, but it was cold walking across Westminster Bridge with hundreds of others calling on the government (that means you…
Category: MARINE PROTECTION
A better deal for our seas
I’m heading for the London Eye to meet up with hundreds of other folk to express our disappointment with the English government’s feeble (lack of) progress on Marine Conservation Zones and marine protection in general. Will I see you there at 11am? I hope so – say hello if you see me. I’ll blog about…
Leave the krill for the whales
Did you see Hugh’s Fish Fight last night? I don’t always watch it but I did yesterday as I saw it was about South Georgia and that’s been a subject which I have covered in this blog (here and here). South Georgia is a long way away from here but is a UK Overseas Territory…
A few dead seabirds – does it matter?
This is a second mention in a row for the RSPCA. Their name has been in the news recently for their rescue of oiled seabirds on the south coast of England. Rather than being washed up covered in thick black oil these seabirds, mostly guillemots, have been found on the coast from Cornwall to Hampshire…
Half-cooked protection
Those Yorkshiremen get everywhere don’t they? Certainly Captain James Cook seems to have done. His journeys of discovery are generally regarded as being Pacific Ocean expeditions but to get to the Pacific you have to start in the Atlantic and either hang a right and go around Cape Horn or hang a left and go…
Book review – Britain’s Sea Mammals by Jon Dunn, Robert Still and Hugh Harrop
The first cetacean I ever saw was probably a harbour porpoise off the coast of Argyll – although I thought it was a dolphin. And the first whale I saw, which surfaced in a raft of Manx shearwaters off the north coast of Rhum, was probably a minke whale – although I thought it was…
Struan Stevenson, do your maximum to yield sustainable fisheries
Tomorrow there is an important vote on the future of the Common Fisheries Policy. It seems likely that a UK (Scottish) MEP may hold the balance of power over whether overfishing continues or begins to diminish. That MEP is Struan Stevenson. When I wrote to Richard Benyon on this subject in the early part of…
Bitterly disappointed, hugely disappointed, shameful, pitiful, appalling, lamentable…
Bitterly disappointed, hugely disappointed, shameful, pitiful, appalling, lamentable… That’s how the Wildlife Trusts, Marine Conservation Society and RSPB described Defra’s announcement that it was consulting on designating just 31 of 127 marine sites selected by a lengthy, inclusive and costly process involving hundreds of people. Further progress might be made next year. Defra described this…
Come on chaps!
I’ve been thinking, off and on, about the marine wildlife riches around Pitcairn Island since the meeting at the Royal Society last week. It was wonderful to get some comments on this blog from Pitcairn Islanders too. I hope it’s not too presumptuous to think that the case for strong protection of the marine wildlife,…
An underwater bounty
On Wednesday evening I was in the Royal Society building in Carlton House Terrace (allegedly where Hitler would have lived if his plan to invade the UK had been more successful) waving at a bunch of kids on Pitcairn Island. Really, I was. Not alone of course, but in a room full of people. Through…