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Regional meeting on Marine Parks in Tehran
industry, and have little scientific advice and generally no research capability. They therefore lean heavily on the technical and scientific support of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, or the Department of Agri. culture and Fisheries, Scotland, in coming to a conclusion. Both MAFF and OAFS have considerablo research and monitoring programmes on marine pollution and for most branches of the subject are now the main centres of expertise in the country, but their responsibility is still confined to commercial f'ulheries and however widely that brief is interpreted, other marine wildlife considerations cannot figure importantly in the final decision. It is true that such bodies as the Nature Conservancy Council are supposed to be consulted if National Nature Reserves or statutory Sites of Special Scientific Importance are threatened, but past experience suggests this is not a very secure safeguard. In the last resort there is, of course, the possibility of local opinion being sufficiently inflamed to force a Public Enquiry into a proposed development, but only the grossest sort of environmental insult (preferably affecting birds) will generate that degree of public awareness. Control of effluent discharge to the coastal waters is obviously not particularly rigorous, though it is fair to say that while there are a good many eyesores and some local pollution hot spots (mostly dating from before the present control measures were introduced) pollution of coastal waters is not generally at a critical level. The weakness of the present system is that it relates only to new discharges and very little can be done to stop bad practices inherited before the planning laws came on the statute book. Soon we are to have a new control system for effluent discharge into the sea when coastal marine pollution becomes a responsibility of the Regional Water Authorities. While this has a certain logic, it is not altogether clear that this will improve the present situation and it presents some anomalies which are distinctly worrying. Regional Water Authorities were set up in 1974 to take charge of the entire water resource of large drainage areas. They combined the functions of the old River Authorities and the Sewerage Boards. In this way planning for the best use of the entire water resource of an area could be anticipated (or at least hoped for). A single unified body was responsible for sorting out the priorities between the conflitting demands on water supplies for drinking, industrial use, cooling and receiving wastes, taking into account the particular character and needs of the region. Whether or not this will prove to be an improvement over the previous system of leaving priorities to be decided by the kind of deal that could be struck between the sewerage boards, with an interest in discharging waste water, and river boards and water supply concerns with an interest in preserving clean water, remains to be seen, but at least the machinery is there for better and more comprehensive regional planning. The logic of putting responsibility for conflicting demands on water supplies under a single authority, becomes a little attenuated when this control is extended to estuaries and coastal waters. The Regional Water Authorities already have taken over the estuaries and, according to the Act will take control of discharges into coastal waters at a date to be announced. This is expected 98
to be from the start of next year. L,nhke imaJ,~ ware,:;, estuaries and the sea have value to the Regional Water Authority as receiving waters for waste, but ne balancing positive value as drinking water or in the conventional sense for sport fishing. Since there is the strongest pressure to conserve inland waters for drinking water supplies, there will be every incentive for the Regional Water Authorities to shift their effluent discharge problems t,) the coast. Countervailing pressure cannot in this case come from within the Authority but, as at present, externally from the Fishery Departments. Added to this dangerous anomaly, Regional Water Authorities have no experience or expertise relating to marine pollution. For freshwaters, they are excellently equipped for engineering and water chemistry but many have only a weak unsophisticated capability for freshwater biotogy, though there are some notable exceptions. Engineering and water chemistry have their role in marine pollution control, but the overwhelming need will be for biological surveys and monitoring, and for this, the Regional Water Authorities are totally unprepared. To understand what is happening in the sea as a result of effluent discharges even as well as they understand what happens in rivers, a great change of attitude will be needed. Instead of being the junior, poor relations in the Authorities, biologists will need to occupy very senior, directive positions, and furthermore, a new breed of biologist will need to be recruited with quite different expertise from those already there. It is not even clear that the biologists with appropriate training and experience exist in the country to be recruited. All-in-all the prospects are not encouraging. It may be argued that all that will happen is the addition of another control agency to the present system, and that even if it will add very little at least it will not make matters worse than they are now. This is unlikely to be true, though. Having given responsibility for the control of effluent discharge into the sea to a new authority no further changes will be envisaged for a good many years to come. Having responsibility clearly saddled on one body, others which at present exercise some control will be able to work only through the Water Authorities and will eventually be weakened. Everything thus depends on how the Regional Water Authorities settle down to their new and unfamiliar job. Unless they change their ways radically in their attitude to biological investigations and are remarkably farsighted, the outlook is dismal. It is anything but obvious that we have developed an effective and appropriate watchdog for pollution in the sea.
Regional Meeting on Marine Parks in Tehran The Imperial government of Iran and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recently convened a regional meeting on Marine Parks and Reserves in the Northern Indian Ocean including the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.
Volume 6/Number 7/July 1975 Held in Tehran from 6 to 10 March, the meeting was attended by ten states from the region: Bahrain, Egypt, Ethiopia, ban, Kenya, Kuwait, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and the Sudan. The meeting split into five working groups which considered specific programmes for the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, the North-West Indian Ocean, regional parks planning, and general principles. Under the chairmanship of Dr G. Carleton Ray, the IUCN chief consultant on critical marine habitats, the meeting produced seven agreed principles to guide further work and six general recommendations. There were also proposals for new reserves. Given national support and assistance from interested international and private organizations, it was hoped that major programmes for the entire region could proceed, even although there was no detailed conservation plan as yet (this depends on further surveys). In its recommendations, the meeting stressed the importance of establishing regional and national systems of marine parks and reserves, giving many reasons (social, scientific, economic, etc.), and urged that surveys be made before any other forms of use were decided upon. Procedures for planning and management were outlined, and the establishment of scientific research stations was proposed. International organizations and other groups were requested to provide technical and financial assistance to governments wishing to carry out protection programmes in marine and coastal areas, and it was suggested that there be more effort to increase public awareness and understanding of the importance of marine parks and reserves and to meet the need for trained technical personnel to carry out marine reserve management. The results of the meeting were to be brought to the attention of the International Conference on Marine Parks and Reserves in Tokyo in May 1975.
US Control of Pollution to be Extended? Senator Edmund Muskie has introduced legislation to extend US authority over coastal pollution from 12 to 200 miles. The Coast Guard has jurisdiction over vessel design and construction standards, and the Environmental Protection Agency has jurisdiction over oil, hazardous substances, and sewage from vessels. Progress on the proposed new legislation is likely to await the outcome of the reconvened Law of the Sea Conference in Geneva.
Californian Oiled Birds The Point Reyes Bird Observatory in Bolinas, California has been monitoring the number of dead birds on California beaches since the San Francisco oil spill in 1971, when it is estimated that about 20,000 birds died from oiling. A further 6000 living birds were taken to cleaning stations during the week following the spill. There has been a disturbing increase in the past 4 years in the proportion of dead seabirds that are oiled, from 1% in 1971 to 19% in 1974. Increased oiling of Common Murres and Sooty Shearwaters seems to be mostly responsible for the trend.
Drilling off Brittany? It now seems likely that the French will start exploratory drilling off the coast of Brittany this year, even although there is no agreement on the median line between French and British territorial waters. Argument over the median line has been going on for some time, and France and Britain have now agreed to independent arbitration over the matter. Part of the argument depends on the status of the waters around the SciUy Isles, a small group of holiday islands off the southern tip of the English coast. The British argue that the islands are an extension of the mainland, and that the median line should be moved nearer to the French coast. The French say that the islands are a geographically separate group in their own area of sea, and want the boundary moved nearer to the British coast. Britain, with all that North Sea oil to worry about, is in no particular hurry to sort the matter out, but France has had little success with drilling so far, and is keen to explore the western approaches to the English Channel. International conventions on offshore exploration say that no drilling activity should take place until a median line has been agreed in any disputed area. The French seem to be fed up with waiting for a settlement of the dispute, and a French semi-submersible drilling rig, the 'Pentagone 84', was expected to start work off Brittany in April/May. Weather conditions in the area, known as the Mer d'Iroise (Angry Sea) to the French, can be as bad as those in the North Sea, and in addition there are constant heavy swells and water depths of up to 300 m in the most promising areas.
Alaska Oil Study The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, working with other Federal and State Agencies in a major investigation for the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management, is to spend $2.5 million on a project to assess the risk to Alaska of any oil developments in the oil-bearing formations beneath the continental shelf in the Gulf of Alaska. The project, which will focus its attention on an area in the northeast Gulf of Alaska between Prince William Sound and Yakutat Bay, will be managed by the Marine Ecosystems Analysis (MESA) programme office of the Environmental Research Laboratories in Boulder, Colorado, and coordinated by its Outer Continental Shelf office in Anchorage, Alaska. The U.S. Council on Environmental Quality, in its 1974 Annual Report, indicated that oil development in the northeastern Gulf of Alaska presented potentially greater environmental risks than in any other continental shelf area studied. Among problems cited were the hazard presented to offshore facilities by the furious maritime storms which sweep across the Gulf; the superficial understanding of the region's rich, complex, and economically important marine ecosystem; the effect on possible oil spills of tides, currents and winds; and the relatively high level of earthquake activity and tsunamis. It is hoped that the first year's work will: (1) Characterize the ocean and estuarine circulation, identify 99
to be from the start of next year. L,nhke imaJ,~ ware,:;, estuaries and the sea have value to the Regional Water Authority as receiving waters for waste, but ne balancing positive value as drinking water or in the conventional sense for sport fishing. Since there is the strongest pressure to conserve inland waters for drinking water supplies, there will be every incentive for the Regional Water Authorities to shift their effluent discharge problems t,) the coast. Countervailing pressure cannot in this case come from within the Authority but, as at present, externally from the Fishery Departments. Added to this dangerous anomaly, Regional Water Authorities have no experience or expertise relating to marine pollution. For freshwaters, they are excellently equipped for engineering and water chemistry but many have only a weak unsophisticated capability for freshwater biotogy, though there are some notable exceptions. Engineering and water chemistry have their role in marine pollution control, but the overwhelming need will be for biological surveys and monitoring, and for this, the Regional Water Authorities are totally unprepared. To understand what is happening in the sea as a result of effluent discharges even as well as they understand what happens in rivers, a great change of attitude will be needed. Instead of being the junior, poor relations in the Authorities, biologists will need to occupy very senior, directive positions, and furthermore, a new breed of biologist will need to be recruited with quite different expertise from those already there. It is not even clear that the biologists with appropriate training and experience exist in the country to be recruited. All-in-all the prospects are not encouraging. It may be argued that all that will happen is the addition of another control agency to the present system, and that even if it will add very little at least it will not make matters worse than they are now. This is unlikely to be true, though. Having given responsibility for the control of effluent discharge into the sea to a new authority no further changes will be envisaged for a good many years to come. Having responsibility clearly saddled on one body, others which at present exercise some control will be able to work only through the Water Authorities and will eventually be weakened. Everything thus depends on how the Regional Water Authorities settle down to their new and unfamiliar job. Unless they change their ways radically in their attitude to biological investigations and are remarkably farsighted, the outlook is dismal. It is anything but obvious that we have developed an effective and appropriate watchdog for pollution in the sea.
Regional Meeting on Marine Parks in Tehran The Imperial government of Iran and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) recently convened a regional meeting on Marine Parks and Reserves in the Northern Indian Ocean including the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf.
Volume 6/Number 7/July 1975 Held in Tehran from 6 to 10 March, the meeting was attended by ten states from the region: Bahrain, Egypt, Ethiopia, ban, Kenya, Kuwait, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Somalia and the Sudan. The meeting split into five working groups which considered specific programmes for the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Aden and the Red Sea, the North-West Indian Ocean, regional parks planning, and general principles. Under the chairmanship of Dr G. Carleton Ray, the IUCN chief consultant on critical marine habitats, the meeting produced seven agreed principles to guide further work and six general recommendations. There were also proposals for new reserves. Given national support and assistance from interested international and private organizations, it was hoped that major programmes for the entire region could proceed, even although there was no detailed conservation plan as yet (this depends on further surveys). In its recommendations, the meeting stressed the importance of establishing regional and national systems of marine parks and reserves, giving many reasons (social, scientific, economic, etc.), and urged that surveys be made before any other forms of use were decided upon. Procedures for planning and management were outlined, and the establishment of scientific research stations was proposed. International organizations and other groups were requested to provide technical and financial assistance to governments wishing to carry out protection programmes in marine and coastal areas, and it was suggested that there be more effort to increase public awareness and understanding of the importance of marine parks and reserves and to meet the need for trained technical personnel to carry out marine reserve management. The results of the meeting were to be brought to the attention of the International Conference on Marine Parks and Reserves in Tokyo in May 1975.
US Control of Pollution to be Extended? Senator Edmund Muskie has introduced legislation to extend US authority over coastal pollution from 12 to 200 miles. The Coast Guard has jurisdiction over vessel design and construction standards, and the Environmental Protection Agency has jurisdiction over oil, hazardous substances, and sewage from vessels. Progress on the proposed new legislation is likely to await the outcome of the reconvened Law of the Sea Conference in Geneva.
Californian Oiled Birds The Point Reyes Bird Observatory in Bolinas, California has been monitoring the number of dead birds on California beaches since the San Francisco oil spill in 1971, when it is estimated that about 20,000 birds died from oiling. A further 6000 living birds were taken to cleaning stations during the week following the spill. There has been a disturbing increase in the past 4 years in the proportion of dead seabirds that are oiled, from 1% in 1971 to 19% in 1974. Increased oiling of Common Murres and Sooty Shearwaters seems to be mostly responsible for the trend.
Drilling off Brittany? It now seems likely that the French will start exploratory drilling off the coast of Brittany this year, even although there is no agreement on the median line between French and British territorial waters. Argument over the median line has been going on for some time, and France and Britain have now agreed to independent arbitration over the matter. Part of the argument depends on the status of the waters around the SciUy Isles, a small group of holiday islands off the southern tip of the English coast. The British argue that the islands are an extension of the mainland, and that the median line should be moved nearer to the French coast. The French say that the islands are a geographically separate group in their own area of sea, and want the boundary moved nearer to the British coast. Britain, with all that North Sea oil to worry about, is in no particular hurry to sort the matter out, but France has had little success with drilling so far, and is keen to explore the western approaches to the English Channel. International conventions on offshore exploration say that no drilling activity should take place until a median line has been agreed in any disputed area. The French seem to be fed up with waiting for a settlement of the dispute, and a French semi-submersible drilling rig, the 'Pentagone 84', was expected to start work off Brittany in April/May. Weather conditions in the area, known as the Mer d'Iroise (Angry Sea) to the French, can be as bad as those in the North Sea, and in addition there are constant heavy swells and water depths of up to 300 m in the most promising areas.
Alaska Oil Study The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, working with other Federal and State Agencies in a major investigation for the U.S. Department of the Interior's Bureau of Land Management, is to spend $2.5 million on a project to assess the risk to Alaska of any oil developments in the oil-bearing formations beneath the continental shelf in the Gulf of Alaska. The project, which will focus its attention on an area in the northeast Gulf of Alaska between Prince William Sound and Yakutat Bay, will be managed by the Marine Ecosystems Analysis (MESA) programme office of the Environmental Research Laboratories in Boulder, Colorado, and coordinated by its Outer Continental Shelf office in Anchorage, Alaska. The U.S. Council on Environmental Quality, in its 1974 Annual Report, indicated that oil development in the northeastern Gulf of Alaska presented potentially greater environmental risks than in any other continental shelf area studied. Among problems cited were the hazard presented to offshore facilities by the furious maritime storms which sweep across the Gulf; the superficial understanding of the region's rich, complex, and economically important marine ecosystem; the effect on possible oil spills of tides, currents and winds; and the relatively high level of earthquake activity and tsunamis. It is hoped that the first year's work will: (1) Characterize the ocean and estuarine circulation, identify 99