After pressure from a very small handful of yacht owners, DEFRA has capitulated and dropped Studland Bay from becoming a Marine Conservation Zone in this tranche of the process. This could not come at the worst time when the seahorses have dropped from 40 animals in 2008 to 1 in 2014 and the seagrass is fragmenting to a point where the sand on the beach is disappearing and the cliffs are starting to crumble.
Seagrass is natures defense against this type of erosion and as the seagrass deteriorates it will mean the council and government will have to spend tens of millions of pounds to build ugly sea defenses, ruining this area of beauty and why? because a small handful of yacht owners might have to pay to moor up to environmentally friendly moorings rather than drop their anchors into the seagrass and rip it apart. These sea defenses would not be needed if the seagrass which is natures natural defense system is protected and allowed to do its job for free.
These few yacht vocal owners, unlike the vast majority of responsible yacht owners, do not care about the environment and base their arguments on spurious claims which have no basis in science and yet The Seahorse Trust and Southampton Universities National Oceanography Centre have studied this site for years and through peer-reviewed research have proven that the site is degrading and the seahorses have disappeared
Where has all the sand gone. This picture was taken this winter only a few weeks ago by Kim Maidment and it shows the black line on the gabions where the sand used to be but it is now gione and bits of the surrounding cliff are dropping as they did last winter and why, because the seagrass is fragmenting and there is nothing to diffuse wave action to stop this from happening.
Please sign the petition below to get DEFRA to reverse the decision and to ask them not to put shaky economic arguments in front of their legally binding obligation to protect the seahorses and the seagrass.
