The No Take Zone
2003
- The MPA’s No Take Zone (NTZ), covering 3.3 km2 off the island’s east coast, was designated on 10th January 2003 following the passing of a specific Devon Sea Fisheries byelaw. It was the first such No Take Zone in the country and created a lot of publicity at the time. It followed two years of consultations with interested parties and had the support of local fishermen who hoped to see an increased catch of shellfish species outside the area resulting from the ‘spillover effect’.
- The main purpose of the NTZ was to protect the delicate, long-lived and slow-growing reef communities that were present on near-shore rocky areas, as well as the burrowing communities found in the soft sediments off the island's east coast. In reality, however, most attention focused on banning the taking of lobsters and crabs from within the area (Hiscock & Irving, 2012).
- Within the NTZ, extraction of anything is prohibited. The concept it to reach a situation where the marine life and habitats are as close as possible to natural and to use the Zone as a reference area where any change should be natural.
- One of the stipulations of establishing the NTZ was that there should be a comprehensive monitoring programme associated with it to assess its success or otherwise. A detailed protocol was subsequently drawn up by Prof. Callum Roberts (then of the University of York and currently at the University of Exeter), a world expert on the justification of NTZs. The monitoring study lasted for four years (2004-2007) and was sponsored by English Nature, Defra, Coastal and Marine Environmental Research, the Marine Biological Association of the UK, the University of Plymouth, WWF-UK and the Esmée Fairburn Foundation.
- As with other similar NTZs around the world, the effect was rapid and was mostly to do with a previously fished species: the common lobster Homarus gammarus. Numbers and sizes increased and the hope was that those lobsters would, whether by spill-out or by the production of larvae, support the fishery elsewhere. The case for the crab species being monitored (edible/brown crab, velvet swimming crab and spider crab) was not so clear cut, with only the brown crab showing a noticeable increase in size of individuals over the four-year monitoring period. No significant changes could be detected in the species living on the seabed being monitored. And whilst the overall abundance of scallops appeared to have increased, it was thought this could have happened prior to the designation of the NTZ.
- For further details of the monitoring studies conducted at this time (2004-2007) see Hoskin et al., 2011; & Coleman et al., 2013 in the Bibliography. For details of the repeat monitoring studies carried out in 2022 see Irving, 2023.
- Linked to the study of lobster numbers and size was a study by Devon Sea Fisheries Committee (now Devon and Severn Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority), initiated in 2008, that tagged lobsters to see how far they travelled. Specifically, it was hoped to find out more about possible ‘spill-out’ effects from the NTZ and what the proportion of males to females was inside and outside the Zone. The scheme relied on fishermen reporting any tagged lobsters they happen to catch. Fortunately, the fishermen were very supportive of the scheme – perhaps because a reward was paid (funded by English Nature/Natural England) every time a tag was returned! In 2008, a total of 905 lobsters were tagged, both off Lundy and off the North Devon mainland. Of the 200 (22%) that were recaptured by October 2009, most had undertaken journeys averaging 2.5 km, with a few nomadic individuals moving further – the maximum distance being 28 km. See Clark (2008 & 2009) in the Bibliography.
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