ONBOARD Magazine autumn 2023

PROTECTING
OUR OCEAN
Blue Marine is filling a niche in the NGO world, enabling
marine conservation to happen fast and effectively,
by forging new partnerships and challenging the
status quo and helping local communities who are
at the front line of ocean conservation
When your workplace happens
to be a boat, it can be easy to
forget that beneath your feet
lies a vast global ecosystem that is teeming
with life. But where would the yachting
community be without a healthy ocean
to sail on? Protecting that ocean from
the many threats it faces is the passion
that drives the Blue Marine Foundation,
a pioneering charity with a creative and
dynamic approach to conservation. Founded
in 2010, its campaigning successes have so
far seen it guarantee protection for more
than four million square kilometres of our
seas — an area half the size of Brazil.
From the outset the superyacht world has
helped support the work of Blue Marine, as
the NGO has established a global network
of partnerships that stretches from Namibia
to Patagonia, the Maldives to the Dutch
Caribbean. Its initiatives too range far and
wide: seagrass restoration in the Balearic
Islands, and the recovery of monk seals in
Greece; support for an all-female sustainable
fishery in Turkey, and controlling sound
pollution in the Aeolian Islands; training
conch divers in the Caribbean Sea, and
investigating illegal tuna fishing in the Indian
Ocean. Where biodiversity has been lost,
Blue Marine helps rebuild habitats that
are vital for regeneration. Its fundamental
belief is that nature has the capacity to
rebound from adversity, if it is simply given
the chance.
From its headquarters at Somerset House
in London, the Blue Marine team oversees
these international projects, and also keeps
a close eye on UK waters. Last year the
charity joined forces with other campaigners
to mount a successful legal challenge that
outlawed destructive fishing on the Dogger
Bank in the North Sea, an area of exceptional
biodiversity. Off the coast of Sussex, in
the south of the country, it helped create
one of the largest inshore areas closed to
trawling in English waters, triggering the
rebirth of huge kelp forests, 95% of which
had disappeared.
This year one of the key areas for Blue
Marine’s UK conservation work has been
the Solent. The 30km strait between the Isle
of Wight and the south coast is unique in
Europe for its complex network of islands,
harbours, spits and vast sandbanks. Its range
of habitats — such as saltmarsh, mudflats,
oyster and seagrass beds — is home to
species like bass, seahorses, shellfish and
internationally important seabird colonies.
The Solent was once the largest native oyster
fishery in Europe, but by 2013 overfishing,
disease, invasive species, habitat loss and
poor water quality drove it to the point
of collapse.
Since 2015, Blue Marine has been working
to restore a self-sustaining population of
native oysters, and has reintroduced more
than 100,000 of the molluscs through the
installation of nurseries. These are filled
with adult oysters, and pump larvae to the
surrounding environment — in 2017 more
than a billion larvae were released. In 2021,
the charity created the first oyster reef in
Langstone Harbour, to the north-east of
the Solent, which is now home to 36,000
oysters. Species such as cuttlefish, juvenile
bass, cat sharks, and even a seahorse were
soon found to have joined them. A further
reef is being created in the River Hamble
towards Southampton, and will be part of
the network planned across the seascape.
© Paul Adams
146 | AUTUMN 2023 | ONBOARD