Could Marine Conservation Zones affect your business?

Marine Conservation Zones are currently being planned for the South West (as well as the rest of England) and are due to be legally put in place in 2012. As a result, there will be areas of the sea where certain human activities are restricted to some degree in order to protect marine life - which could have positive and negative impacts on coastal tourism.

Marine Conservation Zones should provide opportunities for tourism businesses as they have the potential to attract visitors to an area, although, some commercial and recreational activities could also be restricted. It is therefore important that Marine Conservation Zones are planned carefully by Finding Sanctuary (a partnership project which aims to secure a healthy and productive future for the coasts and seas of south-west England), with input from commercial and recreational sea users as well as tourism providers.

On the 23 June 2010, Finding Sanctuary and South West Tourism held a very successful workshop in Exeter, which gave recreational sea users and tourism businesses a chance to meet their representative on the Steering Group and to view and provide feedback on the initial results of the project's mapping work.

You can view the data collected so far through the online interactive map www.mczmapping.org.

If you are a sea user we would encourage you to also share your information with Finding Sanctuary using the interactive map or by contacting the project team. 

The deadline for data coming into the project is September 2010.

About Finding Sanctuary

Finding Sanctuary is the first of four regional projects tasked with designing Marine Conservation Zones around England and recommending them to Government in June 2011. Marine Conservation Zones are a new designation introduced by the Marine and Coastal Access Act.

Finding Sanctuary will work with stakeholders to design Marine Conservation Zones in the South West as part of a wider network of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). The MPA network will be a collection of different sites that work together to provide more benefits than an individual site could on its own.

To find out more about Finding Sanctuary please visit: www.finding-sanctuary.org

Date added: Tuesday 29th June 2010
Latest updated: Thursday 8th March 2012