Last week I had a 2 day visit to my home town of Kingston upon Hull, to attend the Netgain large group meeting. Although I’m a member of the North East Regional Hub to represent the views of wildlife tourism, and the Northeast Cetacean Project, I’ve developed an increasing amount of empathy with the commercial fishermen involved in the process, and I know from speaking to other conservation focussed hub members that they feel the same, and that the view of hub members is that all sectors have worked well together to try and reach a concensus about the location of rMCZ’s (recommended Marine Conservation Zones) and RA’s (Reference Areas). It’s been occasionally tetchy, often contentious, but at the end of the day we all need the North Sea to be healthy enough to deliver what each sector needs. It’s as simple as that.
Now we’re well into our pelagic season, and we’ve already had excellent views of White-beaked Dolphins on our RIB trip to the Farne Deeps. If that isn’t worth conserving, I don’t know what is 🙂