Despite living through tumultuous political times from the late Victorian era through the fight for Irish independence and both world wars, Praeger could not have imagined the dramatic changes in Ireland that would follow his death in 1953. At that time, the majority of Irish people lived in the countryside. Few people owned a private car or could afford to take a holiday other than a few days by the seaside in Ireland. About one-third of Irish homes still had no electricity or running water. Agriculture was the main form of employment and the horse was the ‘tractor’ of the early 20th century. Transport to the many offshore islands was still mainly by rowing or sailing boat and the oceans seemed to hold a limitless supply of fish. Protection of nature was rarely discussed except in the context of hunting, fishing or game management. Praeger hardly ever mentioned threats to nature in his writings, although he was aware of some small changes happening in the early 20th century. On the north coast, where he had once played as a child, he noted ‘the sand-dunes, now thronged with golfers, were then lonely and exciting places’.(WW)
Even in the fifty years since I started work in nature conservation, the threats have escalated in scale and significance. When I began working on the sand dunes in Northern Ireland during the 1970s, the main threats to the coast at that time were considered to be oil pollution, invasive species and disturbance from recreational use. While these pressures can still have localised impacts on coastal habitats and wildlife, my ideas have changed. Half a century ago I was not aware that the rise in greenhouse gases, already being detected at that time, was the result of human activity and would have such major implications for the planet. Nor did I realise that fish stocks in Irish waters were being exploited to the point where some of the previously common species would collapse. Recently, I have become aware of the major problem of plastics in the oceans and the long-term impacts of this. All of these problems have been caused by humanity, and it is up to us to fix them.
Dwindling Fish Stocks
I admit to being a seafood fan. A plate of fresh crab, mussels, prawns or mackerel would suit me for dinner anytime. We have such a wonderful choice of locally caught seafood in this country it is a surprise that it is not constantly on the menu of every home, café and restaurant. As a boy, I remember being invited to go out in a small wooden rowing boat off the coast of West Cork to join a couple of local men fishing for mackerel at dusk. As the sky darkened, we reeled in scores of fish, and when we finally returned to the pier we had a full sack of the glistening green-and-black-striped mackerel, so many that we could not give them all away.
But all is not well today in the fishy world. Multiple pressures on the marine and coastal ecosystems have intensified since Praeger’s time. I sometimes go into the Natural History Museum in Dublin just to look into the glass cabinets at the giant specimens of turbot, brill, plaice, sole and shark that were once caught in the Irish Sea by the crews of sailing boats in the 19th century. Due to overexploitation, fish of this size and variety are absent today. These were caught by line fishing from small wooden boats and later with nets following the introduction of sailing trawlers to Dublin around 1818. An account of a fishing trip off the Dublin coast on one of these trawlers, The Perseverance, was published by Dr William Corrigan:
The produce of the trawling-net, when turned out on the deck, is certainly a curious and interesting sight: comprising skate, ray, brett, turbot, conger eel, John Dory, gurnard, red and gray, cod, haddock, soles, plaice, herrings, mackerel, flounders, squids (small cuttle fish), and piles of queer things about which naturalists get enthusiastic, such as sea-mice, star-fish, sea urchins, comatulæ (feather stars), brittle stars, seaweeds of beautiful colours and forms, beroæ, &c. All these, of no use to the trawler’s crew, they call ‘curioes.’1
By 1900 there were about nine big steam trawlers based in Dublin, and the last of the sailing trawlers ended its days in 1918, having become outdated. This represented a quantum leap forward in fishing methods by comparison to what had gone before, and led to a consequent diminution of the fish stocks. Overfishing has since decimated many of the fish and shellfish populations of previous centuries, and this is having knock-on effects throughout the marine ecosystem, from prawns to porpoises. The Irish Sea is split between Ireland and the UK, and has been overfished by both as well as by other EU fishing fleets. Overfishing in the Irish Sea has driven the collapse in some commercial fish stocks. The reform of the EU Common Fisheries Policy has seen a reduction in the fishing mortality in some stocks such as plaice and haddock, and these have shown some signs of recovery, but cod and whiting populations are still in a very poor state due, in part, to high levels of bycatch in the prawn fishery.
One of my favourite seafood restaurants is on the west pier at Howth in north Dublin, where I have often sat watching the big trawlers unload their catches in the harbour. Box after box is swung ashore to be loaded into refrigerated trucks and driven away, often to other European markets. However, despite the European Union’s legal deadline to end overfishing by 2020, many of the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) limits still exceed the best available scientific advice, facilitating overfishing. BirdWatch Ireland has calculated that over 50 per cent of the TAC limits, of which Ireland has a share, exceeded scientific advice in 2020. According to the Irish Marine Institute, only 20 per cent of commercial fish stocks in Irish waters analysed in 2019 met the criteria for achieving Good Environmental Status. Over the last twenty years, Ireland is among the five EU countries to receive the highest percentage of fish quotas above scientifically advised levels for sustainable limits. The wasteful practice of discarding unwanted low-value bycatch at sea also continues, despite an EU legal requirement that all catches be landed to reduce bycatch through increased selectivity. There is evidence to suggest that the so-called ‘Landing Obligation’ has not been fully implemented in Irish waters, and illegal discarding at sea continues despite the EU’s legal deadline of January 2019. Illegal discarding is contributing to ongoing declines in overfished stocks.2 Although some seabird species like gannets and fulmars have benefitted from exploiting the bycatch, this is not a natural situation, and needs to be changed.
I spent a week living aboard my yacht, tied up in Kilmore Quay Harbour in Wexford, as I waited for a replacement engine part to arrive. Every morning around 5 a.m. the big trawlers in the harbour would drop their lines and steam out to the Celtic Sea to catch more fish. I saw large sharks and tuna being landed here among the more common haddock and cod. Close to the harbour a large factory processes shellfish for export, including thousands of scallops each day.
Predatory fish are not immune from the pressures of overfishing. These species fill ecological niches that are important in maintaining a balance within the ecosystem. Their removal can result in cascading effects that have a negative chain reaction on marine biodiversity right down the food chain. Irish waters contain seventy-one cartilaginous fish species (sharks and rays), over half of the European list. Of these, fifty-eight were assessed using the latest international categories. Six species were considered to be critically endangered – Portuguese dogfish, common (blue) skate, flapper skate, porbeagle shark, white skate and angel shark. For example, numbers of angel sharks recorded in tagging programmes show a decline of over 90 per cent since the 1980s. A further five species were assessed as endangered, while six more species were rated as vulnerable. While there are no longer any vessels fishing directly for threatened cartilaginous fish in Irish waters, some are taken as bycatch in several fisheries, involving both Irish and non-Irish boats. Similarly, endangered and threatened species that straddle Irish and non-Irish waters are caught by fleets further afield.3 Ireland is not unique in this as, since 1970, the global abundance of sharks and rays has declined by 71 per cent owing to an eighteen-fold increase in relative fishing pressure.4
I have been in many small west coast harbours waiting for boats to take me to the islands. Rosbeg Pier in west Donegal is exposed to the full rigours of the Atlantic, and only a few small inshore boats tie up there. Pot fishing for lobster and crab are the main activities, since net fishing for salmon has been banned. At one time piers like this one would have been packed with small wooden boats as local people joined in the harvest of millions of migratory salmon, herring or mackerel. In Praeger’s day, many coastal communities were wholly dependent on healthy fish stocks to sustain them over the year. The fishing was almost entirely in inshore waters close to the coast using traditional rowing boats such as curraghs, hand-made wooden lobster pots, long lines and nets laid from wooden sailing boats and latterly by sailing trawlers imported from England. Vast shoals of herring migrated along the Irish coast and large fleets of migrant fishermen followed them to catch the ‘silver darlings’. I can remember taking home plenty of herring from West Cork in the 1960s, but I would be very lucky to catch any from my boat today.
While it is easy to blame overexploitation alone for the decline of fish stocks, fishermen have understood for centuries that populations can fluctuate due to natural changes as well. In the 19th century whole communities lived by harvesting herrings and pilchards, but they understood that the peaks in these species can alternate, and that one might be replaced by the other. Herring predominates when one of its key prey, a particular species of arrow worm, occurs in large numbers in the plankton. When environmental conditions, such as the North Atlantic Oscillation, change so that a different species of arrow worm predominates, then pilchard outnumber herring.5 So if environmental conditions become less favourable for herring, continued targeting of this species will exacerbate the natural fluctuations, making it less likely that stocks will recover.6
Supertrawlers can scrape the seafloor bare of bottom-dwelling species and capture huge quantities of shoaling fish like sprat and mackerel in a few hours. Small boats, which make up 80 per cent of registered fishing vessels in Ireland, are totally dependent on stocks in inshore waters. Alex Crowley, fisherman and secretary of the National Inshore Fishermens’ Association, told me, ‘if you go back ten, fifteen years we had a very diverse inshore fleet then. It supported a lot of small coastal communities. But there are no fish in the bays any more worth fishing for. The herring stocks we have in Ireland have collapsed. The mackerel is the same. Not only has our sector shrunk, it has also become less resilient and more dependent on fewer stocks. Overfishing has contributed significantly to that.’
I visited Northern Ireland’s major fishing port of Kilkeel in County Down to see for myself what a modern trawler base is like. After the accession of Britain and Ireland to the EU, Kilkeel’s fleet grew from forty boats to more than 160, with local memories still fresh of being able to walk from boat to boat across the full width of the harbour. The fish quotas were largely given to the big corporate-owned offshore fleets with large trawlers. Bottom trawling is used to repeatedly scrape the seafloor with a weighted net which collects scallops, prawns, cod, monkfish, haddock and various flatfish, as well as a confusing mix of non-target species that are treated as bycatch. Repeated trawling of the same areas of seabed can reduce marine life in soft sediments by up to 80 per cent, and represents a major threat to the ecosystem. Bottom trawling is very widespread in the Irish Sea, and especially in its northern muddy areas, which contain the main stocks of Dublin Bay prawn. With repeated trawling up to twelve times a year the abundance of bottom-dwelling invertebrates decreases rapidly. Trawling for shellfish in shallow coastal bays on the west coast is also destroying some of the unique seagrass beds and maërl formations that have taken centuries to develop.7
Dredging also has impacts on shellfish in shallow waters. In just a few years a razor-clam bed discovered at Gormanstown, County Meath, was wrecked by fishing boats using custom-built hydraulic dredges to scour the long-lived clams out of the fine sand. By 1999 about two-thirds of them were gone, mostly sold to Spain.8 Hydraulic dredging to extract razor clams disturbs sediment to a depth of twenty-five centimetres and considerable volumes of sediment are mobilised during fishing. The Marine Institute reported that the impact of this type of fishing on seafloor integrity is significant, especially destroying sediment structure and associated fauna. Some of this activity occurred within the protected area of Dundalk Bay.
In the first eight winters of the 21st century, Dundalk Bay held the only internationally important population of oystercatchers in the country, with a peak of over 15,000 birds in winter 2006–07.9 I joined the team of ornithologists censusing these waders here for the Marine Institute. By 2015–16 the numbers of these distinctive black-and-white shorebirds had declined dramatically. Common cockles are their most important prey, but a cockle fishery in this protected area had already removed over 1,000 tonnes of these shellfish in just three years. Oystercatchers changed to feeding on other prey or moved completely out of the bay to feed in fields.10 Nationally, the total numbers of these waders dropped by over a fifth in the same period, as fewer birds spent the winter in estuaries.11
One of my pleasures on a visit to Galway Bay is to sit outside Morans of the Weir at Kilcolgan with a pint and a plate of delicious flat oysters in front of me. Morans is a family business dating back more than 250 years. In the 1800s it flourished when this was a prosperous little port. The Weir was named after an old wall constructed across the nearby tidal Dunkellin River to trap salmon. Local people also dredged for Galway Bay oysters from the nearby Clarinbridge oyster beds. At one time almost every bay and many offshore banks had natural beds of the native oyster, so abundant that they were thought to be inexhaustible. But by the 19th century, this renewable resource was decimated and the few small populations remaining on the west coast were threatened by poaching, by an oyster parasite called Bonamia ostreae and by poor water quality. From the 1970s, cultivation of Pacific oysters took over from the native species and long lines of oyster trestles in many bays and estuaries became a common sight. By 2004 production of this introduced species exceeded 11,000 tonnes in 250 separate oyster farms.12 However, there has been little change in the volume of oysters nationally, with 10,500 tonnes produced in 2019, 85per cent of which was exported.13 The trestles take up a large space on the sandflats that would be naturally used for feeding by shorebirds. A recent study found that knot, sanderlings, dunlins, godwits and ringed plovers tended to avoid the oyster trestles, as they mainly feed in large flocks of tightly packed individuals.14
The survival of the native oyster may be further complicated by the fact that feral populations of the introduced Pacific oyster are now well established in a number of bays in Ireland. At first, it was thought that the introduced species, originally from the tropical waters of the Pacific, would simply be reared to maturity here in the extensive intertidal oyster farms and could not breed in cold Irish waters. However, some are now producing spat as seawater temperatures increase and this is leading to the establishment of new oyster reefs in bays such as the Shannon Estuary, Galway Bay, Lough Swilly, Lough Foyle and Strangford Lough.15 The spread of the introduced species is much more extensive in some other European waters, and evidence has emerged in the North Sea suggesting that the return of native oysters may actually be facilitated in some places by the spat settling and colonising reefs of invasive oysters at sites where their distributions overlap.16 The indirect effects of introducing species from other parts of the world to our coasts are often hard to predict.
I love to wade out with a bucket to the middle of the Gweebarra estuary in west Donegal at extreme low tide, where the rocks are encrusted with colonies of large blue-black mussel shells. I pull back the curtains of brown seaweed as small shore crabs scuttle away to safety among the barnacle-covered rocks. It takes some strength to prize the mussels off the rocks, as their strong byssal threads bind them to the other shells in the colony. But most mussels sold today come from mussel farms such as those in Killary Harbour, Bantry Bay or Wexford Harbour. This type of aquaculture is normally dependent on the natural ‘fall’ of spat or juvenile mussels from the plankton reaching the ropes that hang in the water. In Wexford the mussel industry requires large quantities of small seed mussels to be relaid in the shallow waters of the harbour. However, repeated dredging of the Irish Sea for seed mussels has reduced this annual harvest by two-thirds, so that there are now insufficient stocks of these juvenile shellfish to support the economically valuable mussel cultivation industry in Wexford Harbour. The decimation of fish and shellfish populations has serious impacts right through the marine food webs.
One of the most interesting seabird locations I have visited is the kittiwake colony that breeds in and around Dunmore East in Waterford. At one time, on the cliffs that surround the busy harbour, these small ocean-going gulls would raise their chicks within metres of the human activity of a busy fishing port. Today, however, this population of kittiwakes is struggling to produce enough young birds, as the fish species on which they depend become scarce. This is our most abundant breeding gull, but the numbers of adults attempting to breed in Ireland have declined by 35 per cent since the 1980s.17 The practice of pair-trawling for spawning inshore sprat has increased in recent years, and the existence of these fisheries operating within the foraging areas of kittiwakes and other seabirds has serious implications for the breeding success of species that depend on sprat. A recent study of breeding kittiwakes at two colonies, Rathlin Island and Lambay, showed that breeding success suffered, most likely due to shortages in food resources near the colonies, with adult birds responding by flying further to find food, resulting in greater losses of their eggs and higher numbers of starving chicks.18
Overfishing is changing the entire balance of the marine ecosystem. By removing predatory fish from marine systems and then fishing down the food web, fisheries have been transitioning to smaller plankton-feeding fish, including sandeels, young mackerel, sardines and sprats (collectively known as forage-fish). When fisheries target these smaller fish species, it not only puts pressure on seabirds that depend upon them but affects food abundance for the larger predatory fish species, with the overall effect of hindering their recovery and unbalancing the entire marine ecosystem.19
For me, one of the highlights of sailing off the West Cork coast is the strong chance of seeing a large whale or a group of dolphins close to the boat. On one memorable occasion, I was accompanied by a pod of common dolphins in crystal-clear waters off Toe Head, and I was able to film them just metres from the bow of the boat. Several whale-watching businesses have been developed based in the picturesque harbours of Baltimore and Castlehaven. In a welcome development, large whales seem to be returning to Irish waters as global populations recover from centuries of excessive hunting. Over a hundred individual humpback whales have been identified by the Irish Whale and Dolphin Group in recent years. Together with fin whales, these depend heavily on small shoaling fish such as sprats and juvenile herring in inshore waters.20 Historical records tell of the vast herring shoals that used to fill bays and harbours like a great silver tide. John Molloy described large winter shoals of herring that would gather off the Stags of Broadhaven, County Mayo, during the 1960s and 1970s. However, these were heavily exploited and disappeared during the 1980s.21 Today, three out of the five herring fisheries, in which Irish fishing boats are active, have collapsed. This includes two of Ireland’s most important herring fisheries, in the Celtic Sea and north-west of Ireland. Sprat are now under serious pressure too. Worryingly, a ban on fishing by large trawlers inside the six-mile limit was overturned by the Irish courts recently. This ban was designed to protect inshore fish stocks, such as sprat, which is a keystone species, providing important food for a range of predators, such as whales, dolphins, seabirds and sharks, and also a range of commercial fish species. Sprat is too important a species in the marine ecosystem to neglect and merely grind into fish meal.
Should consumers avoid seafood altogether to help stocks recover? This might have some impact in Ireland, but the bulk of the catch here is exported either by Irish boats or by vessels from other countries, so it would take a boycott right across the EU to have any significant impact. There are European laws to prevent overfishing based on scientifically based total allowable catch and to prevent discarding of bycatch at sea, but these are routinely ignored by member states, including the Irish government. Now the UK is outside the EU and so not subject to European laws. The fishing industry, especially the large trawler owners, have a powerful lobby that puts pressure on politicians whenever the Common Fisheries Policy is up for renewal. Even the High Court judgment preventing large trawlers operating within the six-mile limit has been overturned recently, leaving stocks decimated and small inshore fishermen without a proper livelihood. A major campaign by combined consumers and environmental groups across the EU and UK, on a par with recent climate action demonstrations, needs to be mounted to pressure the governments to properly enforce European regulations.
Water Quality Concerns
Where I swim on the sandy beach of Brittas Bay in Wicklow the water is usually crystal clear, and I have no concerns about water quality. In Praeger’s time too water pollution was rare and localised but, where it occurred, it was usually the result of untreated sewage entering rivers and estuaries. By the late 19th century Dublin Bay was so badly polluted that consumption of shellfish collected here often caused typhoid fever or death.22 Even today, pollution incidents frequently lead to the closure of swimming beaches around Dublin. The cause is often the malfunction or overloading of wastewater treatment works such as the giant sewage plant at Ringsend in Dublin Port.23 Raw sewage from thirty-five towns and villages throughout Ireland continues to be discharged into rivers, estuaries and the sea, all of which ends up on the coast. A report by the Environmental Protection Agency indicates slow progress in developing modern wastewater treatment works to deal with this problem.24
Nor is Ireland immune from the problem of plastics throughout the world’s oceans. Walking on any beach, even in remote rocky coves of the west coast, I frequently come on concentrations of plastic containers, polystyrene packaging, polypropylene ropes and discarded fishing gear wrapped in seaweed on the strandline. My workshop at home is filled with coils of rope that I have collected on remote west coast beaches far from any harbour. The overwhelming bulk of litter found in beach surveys throughout Ireland is plastic, and this does not decompose but simply accumulates over years.25 In 2019, a team of researchers from University College Cork, investigating deep-water corals 320 kilometres from land, found plastic rubbish in a two-kilometre-deep submarine canyon in the Porcupine Basin. While operating a remotely operated vehicle equipped with cameras, the team encountered a range of rubbish including black plastic bags, fishing gear and water bottles.
Whales, dolphins and porpoises (cetaceans) and most seabirds feed in the ocean, so they too are exposed to plastics. Researchers in Galway Mayo Institute of Technology (GMIT) and University College Cork (UCC) examined a large number of stranded cetaceans, of which 251 had signs of possible entanglement or interactions with fisheries. In postmortem examinations of 528 stranded and bycaught cetaceans, forty-five animals had marine debris in their digestive tracts, with a large proportion being fisheries-related items. The release of microplastics into the sea from washing artificial fabrics is now a major area of concern, as the microscopic particles clog up marine food chains and also enter the human food chain as a contaminant in fish and shellfish. All twenty-one cetaceans investigated for these pollutants in the GMIT/UCC study contained microplastics, with the majority being composed of fibres.26 Heidi Acampora of GMIT investigated the amount of plastic pollution in dead seabirds found stranded on beaches in Ireland. Among fourteen fulmars dissected, all but one had plastics in their stomachs, with the average bird containing sixty-five plastic particles, weighing 1.1 grams. Plastics were also found in several other seabird species, such as guillemots and gannets.27 There is a general lack of awareness among the public about the adverse effects of micro-fibres originating from washing of artificial fabrics such as fleeces. A campaign of action is urgently required.
If consumers understood the long-term damage being done by plastics in the oceans they might accept a levy on the sale of items such as single-use disposable containers, just as Irish consumers did with the ‘plastic bag levy’. But a high proportion of the plastic waste originates with discards from the fishing industry, and this is very hard to control. Equally, plastic washing up in Irish waters may have originated from other countries and even from places outside Europe. Unless bans on the sources of the problem and practices such as dumping at sea are properly implemented this is likely to continue.
Climate Crisis
Like most people, I tend to remember the hot summer days of childhood and carefree holidays spent on the beach or messing about in boats, while choosing to forget the long cold or wet years when we felt cheated of our holiday fun. We are fortunate in Ireland in that we have few extreme temperatures, with our western shores washed by the Gulf Stream (or North Atlantic Drift) to keep us warm in winter. I know people who swim in the sea almost every day of the year and love it. Our weather changes from day to day and from week to week but the climate is subject to much longer patterns and trends. Climate change is already having significant long-term impacts on the oceans, on coastal habitats and wildlife. Since the middle of the 20th century, the oceans have absorbed roughly 93 per cent of the excess heat caused by greenhouse gases from activities such as burning coal for electricity. That has shielded the land from some of the worst effects of rising emissions. However, the rising temperature of seawater is leading to expansion of the oceans and the retreat of cold-water species further north. Globally, this temperature rise has contributed to mass coral reef bleaching, the loss of critical ecosystems, and threatened livelihoods like fishing as the target species have moved in search of cooler waters. Best estimates of ocean warming in the top 100 metres are about 0.6 to 2.0°C and about 0.3 to 0.6°C, at a depth of about one kilometre, by the end of the 21st century. However, due to the long timescales of this heat transfer from the surface to depth, ocean warming will continue for centuries, even if greenhouse gas emissions are decreased or concentrations kept constant.28
I have stood on the coastal promenade at Clontarf on a spring high tide and watched the waves from Dublin Bay lapping around park benches and spilling onto the Howth Road around parked cars. Sea level rise is a real issue for the residents of these low-lying parts of some of our major cities. Expansion of the oceans combined with the melting of glaciers worldwide is causing sea level rise and, along with increased frequency of storms, we are facing more severe coastal flooding, increased erosion of soft beaches and dunes and coastal squeeze. This means that the low water mark is moving closer to land and the intertidal zone is being reduced in area, thus depleting the available habitat for a whole range of animals from cockles to curlews. Recent reports suggest that sea levels worldwide are rising faster than predicted, and experts on coastal flooding say that ‘our beachfront buildings are threatened as never before. It now comes down to buildings or beaches: we must make our choice.’29
The interplay of marine and terrestrial forces is graphically illustrated by a mobile dune system that I know at Loughros More Bay in west Donegal. When I first went here in the 1980s the waves reached almost to the doors of a cluster of mobile homes at the top of the beach. Today, the caravan dwellers cannot even see the sea, and they have to walk through hundreds of metres of new sand dunes to reach the beautiful beach of Trá More. The coast here is quite mobile, as the entrance to the bay moves around with sand eroded on one side and deposited on the other to be reversed again after a few decades. What was once the seabed is now a well-vegetated dune system and vice versa. The changing climate can impact currents in the sea, and this has knock-on effects on coastal ecosystems such as beaches and dunes.
The coastal zone comprises a combination of ecosystems – marine, intertidal and terrestrial – that are all interconnected and dependent on one another. For this reason, the management of one component can have indirect impacts on others. For example, the installation of hard coastal protection such as rock armoury in front of an eroding sand dune system has the inevitable result of degrading the beach sands as the sea transfers its energy to the intertidal area, and this may even result in undermining of the rock armoury. Sand dunes depend on the supply of blown sand from the beach to maintain the different dune-building grasses which naturally repair eroded areas. When the beach-dune processes are interrupted both dunes and beach suffer.30 Current estimates are that the rate of erosion for the Irish coast is between 0.2m and 1.6m per annum, with sand dunes and soft cliffs being the worst affected.31 Currently, no less than 350 kilometres of the Irish coastline are protected by artificial sea walls.32 Sea walls can also cause more long-term issues, such as erosion in other coastal areas by depriving them of sediments that would have previously accumulated there. Softer, more environmentally friendly solutions with fewer negative impacts include ‘beach replenishment’, where sand and sediments are transported from offshore and added to beaches following erosion events.
Turning the tide of climate change is a massive challenge for humanity, and it will take a fundamental transformation in our approach to make any improvement in our lifetimes.33 I firmly believe that, until there are disasters affecting the whole population, such as complete collapse of fish and shellfish stocks due to temperature rise in seawater, flooding of coastal cities and the disappearance of whole beach-dune systems, national governments will continue to prevaricate and the problems will continue. An encouraging trend is the increased awareness of the young generations and their willingness to engage in political action to make big changes happen. In a few decades, they will be the decision makers, but time is running out, and we have to hope that it will not then be too late for action.
Rewilding the Coast
Treating the coast as a dynamic system with space to change naturally is a more enlightened approach than trying to stop the rise of sea level. This type of management has been practised for many years in other countries, and I first became aware that it was needed while working as a warden at Murlough Nature Reserve in Northern Ireland. At sites sites like this, recreational use is carefully controlled to ensure that it does not lead to damage. This type of management which maintains a ‘dynamic equilibrium’ should be applied on a much wider scale in coastal areas that are not strictly nature reserves but which are used for agriculture, golf links, holiday homes and general recreation. The key to this approach is the ability to relocate different land uses where overexploitation occurs and in response to dynamic changes in the coastal system. A policy of managed retreat will be an important response to the certain increase in coastal flooding that we face.34
There is also great potential for the inshore waters around this country to be returned to something of their original richness and bounty. Pádraic Fogarty points to the example set by Norway, which was never part of the European Union, but still exploited marine resources as much as any other coastal country in Europe. The Norwegians introduced a policy of sustainable fish catches which have transformed their fishing industry. The trawlers in that country were prepared to accept scientific quotas for their catches, to abide by closures of fisheries when needed to allow fish stocks to recover and to back this up with strong regulations. As a result, stocks of commercially harvested fish have multiplied naturally and Norwegian fisheries are profitable again.35 A lower catch with a higher value can also lead to a more sustainable income for the fishing families.
Norway was also once the leading country in Europe to exploit the whales of the Atlantic Ocean, from the Arctic to the tropics. They even set up whaling stations on the west coast of Ireland over a century ago, but these did not last long. Norwegian boats still engage in whaling, catching about 1,000 minke whales per year in addition to which cetaceans throughout the oceans now face a wide variety of other threats, such as fisheries bycatch and entanglement, overfishing, pollution (noise, chemical and marine debris) and habitat destruction. In 1991, the Irish government declared the coastal waters of Ireland to be a ‘sanctuary’ where all whales, dolphins and porpoises would be fully protected. However, few practical measures were taken to follow up this laudable aim. There have been further designations of Special Areas of Conservation for cetacean species under European law but meanwhile, the marine ecosystems on which they depend have not been maintained, as many fish populations have been decimated and other marine ecosystems, even within the SACs, destroyed or degraded. The Irish Whale and Dolphin Group says that 2017 was the worst year on record for stranding of dead cetaceans in Ireland.
The need for Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) is urgent and real. Although definitions vary, MPAs can be thought of as marine areas that are managed over the long term, with a primary objective of conserving habitats and/or species and other natural features. The need to expand the network of MPAs in Irish waters is recognised by the Irish government in order to address the current situation, which is not satisfactory. An expert advisory group has concluded that ‘Ireland’s existing network of protected areas cannot be considered coherent, representative, connected or resilient or to be meeting Ireland’s international commitments and legal obligations. There is no definition of MPA in Irish law and this is a gap which needs to be addressed.’36 Where fisheries, aquaculture, dredging or dumping at sea are considered to be detrimental to the natural balance in a MPA, then these activities should be suspended or should be banned altogether until the ecosystem recovers. A simple measure that would aid fishing vessels in recognising and respecting protected areas would be to show the boundaries of MPAs on the marine charts that are widely used both in paper and digital formats. Conservation objectives and management plans for MPAs need to take account of the historical richness of our seas instead of setting the benchmarks at maintaining a status quo. The plight of the native oyster, which was driven to extinction in most of our inshore waters some centuries ago, is a perfect example. Restoration of this key mollusc to its former habitats would have enormous benefits for the marine ecosystem.37 If all Irish coastal waters were managed sustainably, as they ought to be, this would, over the long-term, benefit both fisheries and marine conservation and eliminate the need for MPAs.
MPAs are equally important in Northern Ireland, where they constitute an umbrella term for many other protected areas. There are already a range of designated European sites, Special Protection Areas (for birds) and Special Areas of Conservation (for other species and habitats) which, despite being no longer part of the EU system, currently retain their legal status. In addition, there are a number of Marine Conservation Zones (MCZs), which often overlap with the SACs and SPAs but have been designated for more locally significant species and habitats, and have greater flexibility in how they are managed. Also, significant tracts of intertidal zone and adjacent maritime lands have been designated as Areas of Special Scientific Interest (ASSIs) or National Nature Reserves (NNRs), adding flavour to the ‘alphabet soup’. Thus, a considerable proportion of the Northern Ireland coast has some measure of protection – on paper, at least. The key question is how the designated features are faring, a much more difficult issue; data on their condition is sporadic and difficult to interpret. These sites are largely vulnerable to the same pressures as those in the Republic, and consultations about management, particularly of fisheries, are ongoing. Not surprisingly, the fishing community has difficulties with many of the proposals in the consultation, largely because it acknowledges that use of mobile gear (trawls and dredges) is incompatible with conservation of benthic habitats. However, if ‘favourable conservation status’ can be achieved overall, this would go some way to achieving a coherent network of representative species and habitats. Incidentally, MCZs can also be used to protect archaeological or historical sites and geological features. An opportunity is also presented here by the ability of some ecosystems – eelgrass beds, oyster beds, for example – to fix atmospheric carbon dioxide or ‘blue carbon’. Restoration of these habitats could present government with a ‘win-win’ situation: protecting important habitats and species, supporting some commercial fisheries and helping to achieve net zero greenhouse gas emissions.
A good example of a working MPA is provided by the Lyme Bay Fisheries and Conservation Reserve, a protected area in southern England in which multiple uses such as fishing are allowed, as long as none are damaging to the seabed or to nature conservation. The project has forged links between fishermen, conservationists, regulators and scientists in order to maintain a healthy, productive and sustainable Marine Reserve within the bay that will benefit fishermen and conservationists alike. The Reserve has achieved three objectives: to protect the biodiversity of Lyme Bay, to implement best practice in managing fish and shellfish stocks and to create long-term benefits for coastal communities around the bay. One of the aims here is to help fishermen achieve best quality and top pricing for their catch. To do this they have created the ‘Reserve Seafood’ brand, which markets the low-impact, sustainable, premium-quality, provenance-assured seafood of Lyme Bay. There is clearly a premium market for sustainable seafood, so each fisherman is signed up to the Lyme Bay Fisheries and Conservation Reserve and is accredited by the Seafish Responsible Fishing Scheme. This scheme assures catch quality and best fishing standards. The voluntary Codes of Conduct that each fisherman adheres to and the science which underpins the results of fishing efforts in the bay inform the sustainability of the product. Each vessel is also fitted with an inshore Vessel Monitoring System which guarantees the low-impact traceability of each catch. All of this helps towards the long-term sustainable future of Lyme Bay for both fish and fishermen.
We are facing into a period of unprecedented climate crisis, and this is at last being partly addressed by proposed establishment of offshore wind farms on shallow submarine banks along the east coasts of Ireland to generate renewable energy. However, this useful measure needs to be undertaken carefully, avoiding traditional fishing grounds, important seabird foraging areas and ensuring that the massive structures do not disrupt the supply of marine sediments which are vital to replenish our beaches and sand dunes.
In the fast tidal currents of the Narrows at the mouth of Strangford Lough I have sailed past a large black-and-red structure which was the world’s first experimental, commercial-scale tidal turbine, installed in 2008 but now dismantled. Below the water there were two large propellors, like those of an early aeroplane, which turned one way on the flood tide and reversed on the ebb. By 2012 the tidal generator had produced five gigawatts per hour of renewable power since its commissioning, which is equivalent to the annual power consumption of 1,500 households. From the start, a monitoring programme was set up to assess the environmental impact of the project, especially on marine mammals which inhabit and breed in the lough. The project received full environmental clearance in January 2012 after the monitoring report showed that there were no major impacts on the marine life in Strangford Lough. Bob Brown, former National Trust manager of the Strangford Lough Wildlife Scheme, believes that this experiment demonstrated the enormous potential of subtidal currents for renewable power generation. He says, ‘with the Irish Sea tidal gates at North Channel and St George’s Channel, the power from the tide would be strong and, of course, extremely predictable (so long as the pull of the moon remains!). I believe that, with the right technology, submarine installations could be accommodated in such areas, at sufficient scale to be effective, without compromising marine conservation objectives.’
Unfortunately, decision makers in Ireland constantly ignore coastal conservation, focusing instead on the management of land. Despite being a maritime island, the two governments in Ireland have not traditionally given the sea and the coast the attention they deserve. For decades we have discussed and promoted the concept of Integrated Coastal Zone Management but, for some reason, this has never been adopted in any meaningful way by the authorities in Ireland. When it is successful, it treats the coastal zone and inshore waters as a unit to be managed jointly by all the stakeholders. The problem seems to be that there are far too many sectoral interests here, all with different agendas, and they are unwilling to collaborate.
This problem has been partly overcome in other places, such as California, by general collaboration between all the major users of the coast. On a trip to the Golden State I went to visit the headquarters of Point Blue Conservation Science to learn about the San Francisco Estuary Partnership. This is a collaborative regional program of resource agencies, non-profit organisations, citizens and scientists working together to protect, restore and enhance water quality and fish and wildlife habitat in and around the San Francisco Bay Delta Estuary. Working cooperatively, they share information and resources that result in studies, projects and programmes to improve the estuary and communicate its value and needs to the public. I was taken to visit some abandoned salt lagoons that have been reflooded with seawater and act by absorbing wave energy while providing a rich wildlife habitat. Flocks of marbled godwits called as they flew over my head to their high tide roost in the lagoons. At Point Blue, they have developed the concept of climate-smart restoration as a process of enhancing ecological function of degraded or destroyed areas in a manner that prepares them for the consequences of climate change.
The establishment of Dublin Bay Biosphere Partnership in 2015 offered an example of how this might be achieved in Ireland. But this far-sighted initiative now needs expansion to include many other stakeholders, to broaden its funding base and attract a greater buy-in by the state and semi-state utilities that have a stake in the bay. A separate network of non-statutory organisations (residents’ groups, water sports clubs, schools and maritime businesses) could be established as voluntary Biosphere Supporters to help implement its actions. It needs realistic financing and professional staff if it is to achieve its objectives of becoming a place that is ‘actively managed to promote a balanced relationship between people and nature’.38 Dublin Bay also provides a template for how to manage other heavily exploited coastal areas in an integrated way. If we can do this successfully we will enjoy enormous benefits of sustainable harvesting of marine resources and the maintenance of key tourist attractions such as the Wild Atlantic Way. From the ageless pleasure of children playing on a sandy beach, numerous watersport activities, the health benefits of a seafood-based diet, to the generation of renewable energy from the marine environment, the entire population will have a resource that sustains us into the future.39
A Noble Goal
In his later years Praeger was a strong advocate of nature conservation, and this was recognised when he was elected as the first President of An Taisce, the National Trust for Ireland. ‘I take it,’ he said in an address broadcast by Radio Éireann in 1948,
that we are at the beginning of a very long and also delicate piece of work, calling for patience, tact, judgement and industry, as well as enthusiasm; but our goal is a noble one, and once it is fully appreciated there is very little reason that anyone’s hand should be turned against us. Of necessity we begin in a very modest way, but by degrees the movement will gain adherence and influence and become an important factor in our national life.
He was then close to the end of a lifetime’s work which added enormously to our knowledge of nature and of the early human inhabitants here, as he explored and studied every corner of this island in great detail.
In reality, the conservation movement in Ireland has been fighting this ‘long and delicate piece of work’ as a rearguard battle for at least half a century, and during this time there have been substantial changes in coastal resources that add up to a serious loss for our country. I have worked in nature conservation for most of my adult life, with a special interest in the coast. My first job was looking after a coastal nature reserve, and I have since sailed around the coast for decades. I can see huge changes that have affected the coast and the sea in the century since Praeger studied it. The climate crisis is already bringing new pressures and threats, and the science is quite clear now about the importance of the sea in regulating our climate and of its bounty for our daily lives.
A recent, independent, global review on the Economics of Biodiversity proposes a fundamental change in how we think about and approach economics if we are to reverse biodiversity loss and protect and enhance our prosperity. ‘Humanity must ensure its demands on nature do not exceed its sustainable supply and must increase the global supply of natural assets relative to their current level. For example, expanding and improving management of protected areas; increasing investment in nature-based solutions; and deploying policies that discourage damaging forms of consumption and production.’40 It is time for a turning of the tide.
I will never manage to visit every place that Praeger went on the fringes of Ireland. Nevertheless, as long as I live, I hope to go on exploring it by sailing, swimming and walking on the coast, which I regard as one of our greatest natural assets. I love the smell of the salt air and the constant movement of the tide, wind and waves. The coastline and the sea are among the least modified parts of this island of Ireland. Although there are many pressures and threats, the sea has a great capacity to heal itself given space and time to recover. The return of the great whales from near extinction, the recovery of a shoreline after a pollution incident or the rewilding of a dune system following disturbance are all signs that nature is resilient. While most of it is owned by everyone, I prefer to think of the coast as owned by no one but rather shared between us and the rest of nature. We have a responsibility to future generations to leave the coast in a better condition than we found it. I look forward to a time when, as Praeger said on radio in 1948, nature conservation will ‘become an important factor in our national life’.
I took a walk around a familiar rocky headland in west Donegal that I have been visiting for at least forty years. In over an hour of walking I saw nobody else, just a flock of oystercatchers roosting in a small cove surrounded by cliffs and a single seal watching me from the sea. I passed by an old stone lime kiln in which local people used to burn dried seaweed from the shore over the centuries and the tell-tale ridges in the coastal fields where potatoes were grown at the time of the Great Famine. I thought of how countless past generations have eked out a living from the land and sea on these remote coastlines in a way that was largely sustainable and respectful of nature. Hopefully we can learn from their example and treat the coast with the respect that it deserves.