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Review of the Marine Spatial Plan Bertram Bree – 24 August 2024
I am Bertram E B BREE of Jersey. Being Jersey born and interested in conservation I feel that Jersey needs to better protect Jersey waters for marine ecology as they are world class and have a high importance to marine ecology and are of low interest to a small number of fishermen who are over-fishing the waters and destroying rare habitat for marine life.
Jersey waters are in one of the biggest archipelagos in Europe and have some of the strongest currents in Europe and low pollution and comprise many Ramsar reserves and areas important for marine ecology with the biggest population of Bottle-nosed Dolphins in Europe in Jersey waters and rare marine bird life including thousands of moulting Balearic Shearwaters each autumn one of Europe's rarest breeding seabirds much of the world population moult off Jersey and in autumn huge numbers of rare seabirds moult and feed off Jersey's 800 square miles of coastline and rare seabirds like Great Northern Diver winter off Jersey's coast. Jersey needs to make a big marine reserve in our waters to protect rare unpolluted ecology and like reserves on the French and British coast like the Isle of Wight and Isle of Man UNESCO reserves and Molene archipelago off the Brittany coast.
Jersey is likely to get UNESCO geoparks status for its geology of rare coastal rock formations of ancient rocks hundreds of millions of years old. Jersey could like the Isle of Man and Isle of Wight get UNESCO marine reserve status for its rare marine life as species like Green Ormer and Five Shilling Shell occur in Jersey's waters and nowhere else in the British Isles.
Only small number of fishermen fish Jersey waters commercially but big numbers of naturalists and sport fishermen make up much of the island population who think Jersey needs to make conservation of our big waters a priority not handing them over to a few fisherman to decimate our fish stocks and damage our marine ecology but to protect Jersey waters for local generations not to French wind turbine park operators but to local groups like us in Jersey. I am a representative as a Societe Jersiaise member of the Marine Biology Section and Seawatch Foundation Jersey representative and Groupe Mammalogique Normand Jersey representative as well as Jersey based contact for the French La Rochelle University team studying marine megafauna.
Jersey could make all its 800 square miles of waters a marine reserve as there are only a few vocal fishermen who are doing untold damage to our marine ecology which most of the Jersey population oppose as most Jersey people think Jersey needs to protect our waters as a Marine Reserve and educate people as part of a Jersey Tourism marketing strategy to market Jersey as a world class destination for sport fishing for many tourists and to see rare seabirds and marine life which can attract a lucrative growing market for overseas tourists as well as for local ecologists who are numerous.
B Bree of Groupe Mammalogique Normand and La Rochelle University Marine Megafauna Ecology Team. The French specialists on our waters off the Normano-Breton Golf.