British marine wildlife threatened

This video from England is about Lundy Island Marine Nature Reserve.

From The Independent in South Africa:

Key UK marine species under threat – WWF

July 08 2009 at 06:50AM

London – Much of Britain’s marine biodiversity is under threat from human activity, according to a report on Wednesday which highlights the plight of harbour porpoises and Atlantic salmon.

Legislation currently passing through parliament does not go far enough to protect marine species, says the WWF-UK conservation organisation.

It says the danger comes from activities like oil and gas exploitation, fishing and emerging threats such as climate change.

Its latest research shows:

# Despite being the most heavily protected species in the UK, populations of the harbour porpoise are still declining in areas around the UK due to incidental capture or by-catch

# The pink sea fan, one of the most exotic of our sea bed species, continues to be damaged by fishing gear and is being put at greater risk of natural disease.

# Seagrass beds which provide rich habitats for an array of marine life, including seahorses, and are an important source of food for wading birds, are still being damaged by activities such as anchoring and trawling, and depleted populations show no sign of recovery.

# Atlantic salmon continue to decline and the UK-wide population is considered unstable. The numbers of salmon returning to British rivers from our seas are still a fraction of populations 30 years ago.

Protected zones will help to save Britain’s marine wildlife: here.

About half of 36 fish stocks in the Northwest Atlantic Ocean, many of them commercially valuable species, have been shifting northward over the last four decades, with some stocks nearly disappearing from U.S. waters as they move farther offshore, according to a new study by NOAA researchers: here.

The waters around Lundy Island has become England’s first marine conservation zone as the government project to create a network of protected areas in the seas got under way: here.