North Sea case studies

Fact sheet series VECTORS

Contact

Project coordinator: Mel Austen Project manager: Jenny Lockett

VECTORS Project Office

Coordinated by Plymouth Marine Laboratory vectors@pml.ac.uk, www.marine-vectors.eu

VECTORS

The Dogger Bank case study: a unique place owned by four countries

Vectors of change in European Marine Ecosystems and their Environmental

and Socio-Economic Impacts

The VECTORS project seeks to develop integrated, multidisciplinary research - based understanding of changes taking place in our marine environment, the mechanisms for them and the ecological impacts expected from them. VECTORS will examine how these changes may affect the range of goods and services provided by the oceans, the ensuing socio - economic impacts and some of the measures that could be developed to reduce or adapt to these changes.

Regional Seas Case Studies

VECTORS studies three regional seas, the North Sea, Baltic and Western Mediterranean, as research areas for investigating the impacts of human activities and how multiple pressures can have combined and interacting effects for the marine environment, society and economy. Within each of the regional seas several case studies are taking place to allow more targeted investigation of the causes and impacts of these pressures in particular environments. This series of fact sheets provides an overview of each case study and the varying scientific approaches used.

North Sea case studies

Drivers of change in the North Sea include shipping, pollution, renewable energy generation, fishing, aquaculture, sand and aggregate extraction. These activities can result in changes in species distribution, impacts on biodiversity and ecosystem function and a decrease in fishing revenue, resources and tourism.

The Dogger Bank is an environmentally and economically important area due to its high biodiversity, important fishing grounds and geographical location within the exclusive economic zones of four countries. This case study is investigating the ecological, economic, and societal costs and trade-offs of management options in this complex area.

VECTORS aims at understanding the long-term changes in the communities on Dogger Bank, particularly the distribution and productivity of commercially targeted fish species. This is being achieved through several approaches:

» Analysis of long-term data sets

» A targeted research cruise

» Statistical analysis of fish and environmental data

» Modelling of fish habitat preferences

» Modelling of fishing fleet activity

The Dogger Bank provides a complex case study from an economic viewpoint, making it a region where international, European and national policies need to be harmonised. Historically the area has been used as a rich fishing ground primarily by Dutch, German, Danish and UK fleets and competition for space is intense and increasing. The issues being investigated by VECTORS are:

» The impacts and benefits of proposed renewable energy developments, for example FOREWIND are proposing the development of a wind farm in the UK sector of the Dogger Bank, covering an area of 8,660 km2.

» The effects of other economic interests including oil and gas, aggregate extraction, and shipping.

» Adaptability of fisheries management

The biodiversity of the Dogger Bank provides benefits for people and society by providing food, wildlife watching opportunities and even impacts on our climate. As marine life changes, due to increased pressures from humans, these services and their values will change. In VECTORS ecologists and socio-economists are carrying out studies to understand the current value of the services that biodiversity in the Dogger Bank provides and how they might change in the future. This is a comparatively new area of marine science and VECTORS is developing and improving the methodologies.

Fishing is an important economic activity in the Dogger Bank

V1: Feb 2013

VECTORSVECTORS is a European project (26455) supported within Themes 2, 5, 6 and 7 of the European Commission Seventh Framework Programme

Further informationThe creator of this fact sheet is

Daryl Burdon, University of Hull, UK. E-mail: D.Burdon@hull.ac.uk

VECTORS will use the information obtained on the mechanisms of change in species distribution and productivity in order to predict possible future distribution of fish species of commerical importance. This will again be done through a wide array of models, which will be used to predict the status of the ecosystem under different scenarios of future conditions, particularly in relation to climate change and human activities on the Dogger Bank - namely: fisheries under altered conditions of species distribution, and of fishermen’s access to fishing grounds through area closures for nature conservation or wind farm developments.

The future

The Dogger Bank is a shallow sandbank, covering an area of 18,700 km2 in the southern part of the North Sea, where water depths range from 18 m to 63 m. It is an outstanding region in many aspects, including a high diversity of fish species, its use as a fishing ground, and the area is of growing interest for economic activities from other sectors.

Figure 1: Location of the Dogger Bank and the Exclusive Economic Zones of the United Kingdom (UK), The Netherlands (NL), Germany

(GER) and Denmark (DK) (Source: Hommes et al., 2012).

Where

UK

NL

DK

GER

The Dogger Bank is a region of particular ecological importance as it comprises a transition zone between the quite distinct ecosystems in the northern and the southern North Sea. Overall, the northern North Sea is characterised by a higher diversity of fish species and a lower diversity of benthic invertebrate species than the shallower - typically less than 50 m deep - southern areas. Due to its position as a transition zone, biodiversity on the Dogger Bank is high, and communities are distinct at fine regional scales.

The Dogger Bank provides a test case for how nature conservation legislation is implemented in an offshore marine area. The UK, Germany and The Netherlands are in the process of designating their respective parts of the Dogger Bank as Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) for sandbanks which are slightly covered by water all of the time, whilst Denmark has opted not to designate their area since they consider the Danish parts of the bank to be too deep to classify them as sandbanks. At the present time, several EU Member States pursue marine spatial planning, both on the national and the international level on the Dogger Bank (Figure 1).

Why

To understand some of the economic consequences of vectors of change we are using a bio-economic model, Fishrent, that links understanding of the biology of fish to the economy of the fisheries that depend on them as well as the wider

marine economy. VECTORS is using Fishrent to understand how competition for space between the economic sectors of fisheries (for flatfish and sandeel), renewable energy extraction and oil as well as the space needed for marine protected areas that support conservation and fisheries management changes how the Dogger Bank supports the marine economy.

Governance issues of relevance to the Dogger Bank have been reviewed as part of a wider review of policy and legal frameworks at the international, European and national levels in relation to VECTORS thematic topics. The Dogger Bank provides the focus for a case study which contributes towards a better understanding of the needs and requirements of local stakeholders and conflict resolution attempts in an offshore marine area, where economic activities are currently increasing.

Fishing trawlers

How