Late last month, Jersey’s government approved legislation to protect 23.6% of its waters from mobile fishing gear such as dredging and trawling, in what conservationists have described as a landmark moment for marine protection across the British Isles.

The newly agreed Marine Protected Area (MPA) network will see 21.7% of Jersey’s waters come into force from September this year, with a further 1.9% following on 1 January 2030.

These protections place Jersey significantly ahead of England, where just 11% of waters are currently protected from bottom-towed fishing practices – and move the island meaningfully closer to its international commitment to safeguard 30% of its seas by 2030.

But what exactly is being protected?

Jersey sits at a confluence of currents in the English Channel, creating a remarkably dynamic and biodiverse marine environment. Its waters are home to one of the largest pods of bottlenose dolphins in the region – numbering around 350 individuals – alongside extensive seagrass meadows, kelp forests, and reef systems. But it is Jersey’s maerl beds that conservationists are most eager to protect.

Maerl is a calcified, slow-growing algae that forms intricate, coral-like pink structures across the seabed, capable of hosting extraordinary levels of marine life. “It’s our favourite habitat because it has the highest levels of biodiversity – it’s pink, which looks great,” said Freddie Watson, Channel Islands Project Manager for Blue Marine Foundation, who has been working on the project since 2021. “But one of the issues with maerl is that it’s incredibly sensitive and very slow-growing. To grow one millimetre can take a year – sometimes less than a millimetre in a year.”

The habitat is also critically important to Jersey’s fisheries. Maerl beds serve as nursery grounds for juvenile scallops, one of the most commercially significant species in the northeast Atlantic. Yet of the approximately 60 square kilometres of maerl beds in Jersey’s waters, only around 13% were previously protected from dredging and trawling – the very activities most destructive to them.

The consequences of that exposure are not merely theoretical. Local scientists conducting surveys of maerl beds once witnessed the before-and-after impact of a single trawler passing over a site. “They went back to the exact same location the next day,” Watson recalled, “and they could see the marks on it – it was just totally obliterated.” That chance documentation proved pivotal in making the case for protection.

Blue Marine Foundation has been involved in Jersey’s marine conservation efforts since around 2018, initially supporting research into the effectiveness of existing protected areas, before establishing a permanent presence on the island in 2021.

The marine spatial planning process that ultimately led to this legislation began in earnest in late 2022 – making the four years from conception to approval relatively swift by the standards of marine protected area designation.

Jersey’s MPAs are defined unambiguously as no-mobile-gear zones, meaning no dredging and no trawling, full stop. Watson believes this directness was crucial – and contrasts it with the approach taken in the UK, where many MPAs were designated without the accompanying legislation to actually prohibit damaging activities.

“The UK has designated but not legislated and managed,” he said. “The fishermen have been allowed to fish in these areas for 20 years – so of course they’re going to. And once you try and remove that, it’s going to be so difficult to do.”

Gaining the support of Jersey’s fishing community required careful negotiation. The island’s fleet is predominantly a crab and lobster fishery, relying largely on static gear such as pots and gill nets, which are unaffected by the new protections. That distinction proved important.

“These MPAs only protect against mobile fishing gears,” Watson explained. “The majority of the fleet can still operate within them – so they act as a safe haven not just for biodiversity, but for low-impact sustainable fisheries too.”

The boundaries of the network were also shaped by negotiation with French fishing fleets, who operate in Jersey’s waters and whose objections have previously complicated conservation efforts. The originally proposed coverage of 27% was reduced over successive rounds of consultation to the current figure of 21.7%. A poll of Jersey’s residents conducted in 2022 found that 80% supported MPAs closed to bottom trawling – and 90% favoured an outright ban on bottom trawling across all of Jersey’s waters.

Enforcement will be supported by vessel monitoring systems already fitted to all Jersey-registered commercial fishing vessels, with government able to geo-fence protected areas and receive automatic alerts if a vessel’s speed and location suggest dredging activity is taking place.

For Watson, the significance of what Jersey has achieved extends well beyond its own coastline. Marine protected areas, he argues, work – but only when they are clearly defined, properly legislated, and given time to recover. “Knowing and seeing that the ocean can bounce back gives me a lot of hope,” he said. “We just need to give it the space it needs.”

“This is a pivotal moment for Jersey’s marine environment,” Watson added. “This is the result of years of careful work, conversation and collaboration, underpinned by strong scientific evidence. By protecting these places, we’re giving marine life the space it needs to recover, supporting more resilient fisheries and helping our seas adapt to the pressures of climate change.”

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