No Take Zone monitoring studies
Background information regarding the establishment of the No Take Zone within the Lundy MPA can be found here.
The location of sites at Lundy (inside and outside the NTZ) and as control sites in NW Devon and SW Wales © Miles Hoskin 
Four (of the six) species used to assess the impact of the NTZ on benthic marine life. Top left: Pink sea fan Eunicella verrucosa; Top right: erect sponge Axinella dissimilis; Bottom left: Dead man’s fingers Alcyonium digitatum; Bottom right: Potato crisps bryozoan Pentapora foliacea © Miles Hoskin 
Western Morning News, 16th Oct. 2004First assessment of the No Take Zone
Following the establishment of the No Take Zone (NTZ) in January 2003, a comprehensive monitoring programme was put in place by English Nature to determine what impact the NTZ would have on species of nature conservation importance as well as on species of commercial interest such as crabs, lobster and scallop. The monitoring programme, which was to acquire four field seasons’ worth of data, was designed by Professor Callum Roberts of the University of York, a leading expert in the concept of NTZs. Tenders were sent out to various consultancies, with the winning consortium being led by Dr Miles Hoskin of Coastal and Marine Environmental Research.
Within the NTZ, extraction of any living thing is prohibited . The idea is to get to a situation where the marine life and the underwater habitats are as close as possible to natural – in effect a ‘rewilding of the sea’ – and to use the Zone as a reference area where any change should be natural.
It was unfortunate that no data had been acquired prior to the NTZ being established and therefore no comparisons could be made with a time when fishing was still permitted within the area. To compensate for this situation, control sites were set up not only on the west side of the island (where pot fishing continued) but also at remote sites off the coast of North Devon and off the coast of Pembrokeshire (see map to right). Unfortunately, it took 18 months from the launch of the NTZ to get the monitoring programme underway. Funding, which allowed fieldwork to be undertaken for four successive years, was secured from: English Nature, Defra, 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 effects exhibited by the one at Lundy were rapid and mostly to do with a previously fished species: the common lobster Homarus gammarus. By the end of the fourth year of fieldwork (2007) the results showed that:
- The impact of the NTZ to sessile invertebrate communities was negligible;
- The impact of the NTZ to the common lobster Homarus gammarus was considerable. The number of legal-sized lobsters caught within the NTZ was found to have increased by a factor of 5 over the period of four years, with most of the increase taking place within the first two years. In addition the mean size of lobsters within the NTZ was found to have increased by 5.2%.
- The number of edible/brown crab Cancer pagurus showed no change but their mean size increased by 25% within the NTZ compared to outside it;
- The number of individual velvet swimming crab Necora puber were found to have decreased significantly within the NTZ. Lobsters are known to attack and feed on these crabs.
- The number and mean size of king scallops Pecten maxiumus were maintained from inside the NTZ to outside of it;
- There was a noticeable ‘spill-over’ effect of lobsters into areas around the fringes of the NTZ, thereby benefitting the numbers available to be caught by potting boats.
For further details of this study, see the papers written by Hoskin et al. (2011) and Coleman et al. (2013) in the Bibliography.
A pale yellow plastic tag can be seen attached to the lobster © D&S IFCA 
An incident & accident card from the Lundy MPA board game. See here for further information about the cards.Lobster tagging project
Following on from the NTZ monitoring studies, a project was initiated by the Devon Sea Fisheries Committee (which became the Devon and Severn Inshore Fisheries and Conservation Authority in 2009) which tagged lobsters to see how far they travelled. Specifically, it was hoped to find out more about possible ‘spill-over’ effects from the NTZ and what the proportion of males to females was inside and outside the NTZ. The numbered plastic tags were inserted into muscle tissue between the distal end of the thorax and the start of the abdomen.
The scheme relied on fishermen reporting any tagged lobsters they happened to catch – a small cash reward being made for any such returns. In 2008, a total of 905 lobsters were tagged at 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 more nomadic individuals moving further – the maximum distance being 28 km! More individuals were tagged in 2010 and 2011 after which the funding for the project ceased.
For further details of this study, see the brief report written by Clark S. (2010) Summary of DSFC Lobster tagging programme results, 2008-2010 in the Bibliography section here.
Extracting a lobster from a pot © Robert Irving 
The underside of a ‘berried’ female lobster. The eggs may be held in place for up to 9 months before being shed, during which time they change colour from red to black © Robert Irving 
After their measurements had been taken, all of the catch was returned to the sea © Robert Irving 
New pots were purchased for this project. Each pot (with associated rope and fittings) cost £160. Fortunately, the project was able to sell them on after the completion of the project © Robert IrvingSecond assessment of the No Take Zone
As part of the Marine Festival during the summer of 2022, a follow-up study to the original NTZ monitoring programme was undertaken by Sea-Scope Marine Environmental Consultants (funded by the Blue Marine Foundation) and by the University of Plymouth (funded by the North Devon Biosphere). As no other studies assessing the effectiveness of the NTZ had been undertaken since 2007, it was considered high time that a repeat assessment was made.
While the scope of the study was not as extensive as the study conducted from 2004-2007 (there were no control/reference sites away from the island, just sites outside the NTZ on the north, south and west coasts), sampling was carried out from April to September 2022 using five strings of 10 pots each.
The results from the study conducted during the Marine Festival showed that the number of legal-sized lobsters was as much as 6.6 times as many inside the NTZ as opposed to outside it. When it came to any differences in size between the two groupings, this was far less apparent (see second histogram below) with subtle differences between the sexes.
The results of the catches of edible/brown crab and velvet swimming crab showed that far more individuals of these two species were caught outside the NTZ than within it. It is tempting to speculate that this may be because of the higher number of lobsters present within the NTZ having the effect of keeping them away from the NTZ, although there is no scientific evidence to back this up.
For further details of this study, see the report written by Irving R. (2022) Lundy No Take Zone: an evaluation of its effectiveness after 19 years (2003-2022) in the Bibliography section here.
