MORE than 30 per cent of the North Sea should be turned into a network of protected marine reserves to help rebuild fragile fish stocks, according to an environmental pressure group.
WWF UK says there is an urgent need for protected areas to provide refuges for commercially important species, such as cod, haddock and plaice.
Existing fisheries management regimes, it argues, fail to protect these species, whose numbers have fa
llen as much as 90 per cent since 1990. Some, including the common skate, have all but vanished from the North Sea.
In the organisation's response to the government's proposals for a new Marine Bill, WWF UK is urging ministers to set up five small marine reserves to test their effectiveness.
Last year The Scotsman launched a "Save our Seas" campaign calling for the creation of a network of reserves and protected areas around the coast, a system of marine planning to organise human activity and for control of conservation of the sea to be devolved to Scotland.
Today, Richard Lochhead, the cabinet secretary for the environment, will call on the Scottish Parliament to unite behind moves to devolve more powers to manage the country's "unique" coastal and marine environment.
Speaking ahead of a debate in parliament, Mr Lochhead said: "I have made it clear we agree with The Scotsman that there should be further devolution for the marine environment between 12 and 200 nautical miles from Scotland's shore."
The five sites earmarked for reserves by WWF are an area north of Shetland, the Aberdeenshire coast, close to the Dogger Bank, the North Norfolk sandbanks and part of the northern North Sea close to the boundary with Norwegian waters.
Giles Bartlett, the fisheries policy officer at WWF UK, said: "The report shows that areas closed to fisheries can meet conservation targets without having a substantial negative impact on the fishing industry."
But Bertie Armstrong, of the Scottish Fishermen's Federation, said the WWF proposals were "fundamentally flawed".
SETTING THE AGENDATHE Scotsman has launched a campaign to protect our precious marine life. We want:
• A network of marine reserves and protected areas to be created to safeguard sites properly.
• A system of marine planning, effectively zoning areas for appropriate use, to safeguard important fishing grounds from offshore wind farms and other projects.
• A single organisation to administer this system.
• Scotland to be given control of conservation to the 200-mile boundary with international waters.
