Good News on Marine Recovery
Five years after a ban on bottom trawling along the Sussex coast, scientists, fishers and conservationists are reporting the first meaningful signs of seabed recovery — with mussel beds stretching more than a kilometre and increasing numbers of black sea bream detected in underwater surveys.
The Sussex Kelp Recovery Project (SKRP), described as the UK’s largest marine rewilding programme, was established following the introduction of a byelaw in 2021 by the Sussex Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority (IFCA), prohibiting bottom trawling across more than 300 square kilometres of seabed between Shoreham and Selsey. By 2019, an estimated 96% of the kelp forests that once lined the Sussex coastline had disappeared — lost to decades of trawling, sedimentation, marine heatwaves and storm damage.
The SKRP described the project as having witnessed “a quiet but powerful transformation beneath the waves.”
Follow this link to read the article about signs of seabed recovery along the Sussex Coast
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