Welcome to the Marine Biologist podcast.
Join us to discover the latest ocean topics from leading marine
scientists and conservationists. The podcast accompanies The
Marine Biologist, the magazine for members of the Marine
Biological Association, and is presented by the editor, Guy
Baker. We hope you enjoy this episode.
Today we're going to be talking about marine conservation and
the power that communities can bring to protecting special
areas of the sea. We're delighted to welcome
Doctor Bryce Stewart, Senior Research Fellow at the MBA and
Associate Professor at the University of Plymouth, who
wrote in the Marine Biologist magazine about the marine
protected areas around the Isle of Arran on the West Coast of
Scotland. Hello, Bryce, Welcome to the
Marine Biologist Podcast. Hi, Guy.
Yeah, thanks very much. Great to be here, Ed.
So let's launch straight in some questions.
What three things should we know about you?
Wow, OK, some 3 interesting things.
So when I was young I wanted to be a professional holiday man
according to my dad, but he told me to be a marine biologist
instead, which is not quite the same thing, but just
occasionally. As a marine biologist, I feel
like I'm on holiday in some nice tropical place, you know,
snorkelling on the beach. Another thing, I guess, which is
a bit unusual. I grew up in Papua New Guinea
and I still have a pretty good handle on the language there.
Top Pisson. So Mipolay got good palace savvy
long or to get to something belongs Solwara, which basically
means I know a lot about what's in the ocean.
So I'm a marine biologist. And then I guess the other thing
is I, I'm well known for my sort of interest in scallops and my
work on scallops. But if I had to choose, I'd, I'd
say probably my biggest, the biggest thing I'm a fan of is
cricket. Actually.
I'm a huge cricket fan. So I have been, I'm not very
good. I tried to be a good cricket
player, but I wasn't. But yes, my my interest in
marine biology and in cricket sort of compete with each other
a little bit. That's great, a good rounded
character. You've given us some clues, but
tell us how you became involved in marine science and what your
research area is. Yeah, so I guess those things
that I've told you about, apart from the cricket, are related.
So, yeah, I grew up originally when I was young in Australia
and, and like most Aussies, we spent a lot of time on beach
holidays and, and then we moved to Papua New Guinea when I was 8
years old and I was there until I was 17.
And I think that really sealed the deal because where we lived
there were coral reefs nearby. So from 8 years old I was
snorkelling on these amazing coral reefs and then you know, I
learnt to scuba dive when I was a little bit older than that.
I also have always loved going fishing as well and I think
that's part of it. So that interest in both what's
under the water but also interest in fishing at at the
same time is kind of shaped the way my career's developed.
So I studied an undergraduate degree back in Australia at the
University of Melbourne, just in zoology.
I worked for a couple of years for the Victorian Government
fisheries department and then I did my PhD up in Queensland at
James Cook University on the Great Barrier Reef.
And really from there, Yeah, this joint interest in in fish
populations, fish communities, how they work, the need for
conservation, but also this interest in fishing and
recognising it as a very important food source, but also
part of history and culture, lead my research to sort of
really focus on how do we balance those two things?
How do we supply seafood to the world's population and maintain
fishing communities while also looking after the marine
environment? Your article in the Marine
Biologist magazine is about the Isle of Arran and showing that
marine conservation begins at home.
Can you bring us up to speed on why Arran has become a focus for
marine conservation? Yes, it's, it's quite a long and
interesting story, but I'll try and sort of just give you the
highlights. So the Isle of Arran on the West
Coast, Scotland is in the first of Clyde, which naturally is an
extremely productive marine area and and once supported some of
the most productive fisheries in the whole of Europe.
But because of a combination of sort of changes in legislation
and poor management, those fisheries really started to
decline, particularly in in the latter part of last century.
And and one of the things that happened along the way was that
the inshore area from sort of the coast of three miles off in
the 1980s that was opened up to trawling, bottom trawling.
And until then, it had still been relatively healthy.
But two local scuba divers, Howard Wood and Don Mcneish, saw
this, you know, in front of their eyes.
They saw the change that this created it it, They saw the loss
of biodiversity on the seabed. They saw the decline in fish
populations. And, you know, they're not, they
weren't marine biologists or scientists.
Howard ran a, a garden centre. John Don's an engineer.
But they were very concerned about this change in their local
environment. So in the early 90s, following a
holiday in New Zealand that Don had been on, where he'd heard
about these things called marine reserves, came back and said to
his mate Howard, we need one of these on the Isle of Arran.
We need to have an area that's protected from fishing to see
how it can recover. And then Fast forward 13 years,
which is what it took for that to actually happen, they finally
got the Lamblash Bay no take zone.
It's a very small area, it's only about 2.8 square
kilometres, but it's, it's no fishing.
And it's the, it was the first one of these in Arran in
Scotland, sorry. And still the only one.
And what was really key to making that happen was engaging
the local community. So Howard and Don formed what's
now known as Coast, the community of Arran Seabed Trust,
which was, you know, is made-up of a load of members from Aaron
and and some from further afield who support this idea of looking
after your marine environment. And from that, that early stage,
it's really gone from strength to strength.
So they they originally got that no take zone in 2008 and then on
the back of the sort of really quite rapid recovery of that in
the first few years and some changes in UK legislation, they
were then able to campaign for a much bigger marine protected
area around the South of the island, the South Aron MPA.
Now that doesn't, that's not a no take zone.
It allows some low impact fishing.
But again, all of these these measures, these these different
types of approaches to sort of conserving and managing the
marine environment and the engagement of the local
community have have kind of made it famous to be honest.
So maybe some examples of that is that Howard, who was one of
the founders, won the Goldman Environmental Prize back about
10 years ago, which not many people may have heard of, but
it's considered to be the biggest prize in the world for
grassroots conservation. So he was invited to America,
went on a big tour, was, you know, set set to meet the
President Obama at the time. Unfortunately he got called out
on some urgent business, but he still went, he went to the White
House and, and not long after that Howard was also aborted an
OBE. So yeah, it it's become this
focus, this example of what you can do at a small scale if you
have support from the local people.
Yeah, we protect areas of the sea so that nature has a chance
to regenerate. And as we saw in David
Attenborough's new film Ocean, the seabed is particularly
important. Why is this?
Yeah. So the seabed plays a lot of
different roles, I guess. I mean, one of the key things to
know is that, you know, anything that goes into the ocean, pretty
much anything, it sinks and it ends up on the seabed.
So that's where a lot of the nutrients, but also
unfortunately, increasingly things like litter end up.
But in terms of the seabed for ecosystem function, yes, it
recycles nutrients, but it also, and it stores away carbon as
well as we hear in the film. But I guess probably most
significantly for marine life in the ocean is that it it, it
supports this incredible array of biodiversity.
So lots of species live in and on the on the seabed, but a lot
of those species actually create habitat.
So we can think about things like seagrass or kelp or
obviously coral reefs as well, and they grow on the seabed and
then they provide this 3 dimensional structure which acts
sometimes as food but also as shelter, particularly for small,
you know, fish and shellfish and other species like that.
So a healthy seabed is actually really important for
biodiversity in general. And my connection to what's
happened on Aaron in particular is that I was lucky enough to
meet Howard and on 20 years ago. We had a workshop at the time in
2003 that was designed to bring together everyone in the UK who
worked on Marine protected areas at that time.
And there were nineteen of us. That was it.
I think if you did that workshop again now there'll be over 1000
for sure, but it was early days then.
And through that initial meeting, I supported their
campaign for this Lamblash Bay no take zone with with the
science when I could, but then also soon after it was
designated, Howard said to me, no one's really monitoring
what's going on, what's recovering.
And so we started off on a small scale.
One of my masters students at the time, Lee Howarth, went up
and did the very first sort of detailed surveys on the sea
floor of the Lamblash Bay no take zone and then of the areas
around it to look at how recovery was happening.
And like I say, it was already, even after 18 months, the area
was recovering. And then since then we've just
expanded that monitoring programme.
So I've had, you know, I think over 20 different students and
other people involved in the 15 years since then.
And we've really expanded our methods as well.
So it's predominantly based on doing scuba diving surveys of
the seabed, but we've got more sophisticated.
So we started to take, you know, high resolution images, both
stills and videos. We've used sonar, we've started
to use crab and lobster pots to monitor what's going on with
those species. We've used baited underwater
video cameras and even been a little bit of Edna work done as
well. That's great.
And I'm looking at the image in the article you wrote in the
magazine. It was that beautiful seabed
alive with briar zones and sea squirts and scallops and that
big pink sun star starfish. Do you know if that was that an
area that was previously dredged?
Yeah, it was actually. So pretty much all of both the
no take zone and the marine protected area were dredged.
Not not the areas just right in close to the shore obviously,
but but the vast majority, it was all open to dredging.
There was no restriction on it. So the only restrictions were
just based on the depths and and the habitat.
And I guess, you know, fishermen do generally only dredge where
they think they'll catch scallops.
But yeah, that area was dredged. And this is something that we'd
really seen over time is this incredible recovery of of the
seabed in the absence of these sort of bottom toed fishing
gears. So we actually have wasn't done
by me, by my team, but before the area, the Lamblash Bay no
take zone was created, there was some side scan sonar imaging
done. And it genuinely does look like
a ploughed field. So you can see, you know, dozens
of tracks across it in this big area.
And so it really was in a pretty poor state at that point.
And so now to see how it's recovered, it's quite
remarkable. But it's what's also interesting
is we're just starting to get a better idea of how ecosystems
function naturally. So some things have gone up
pretty steadily. So the King scallops in
particular, there's a lot of variability on the seabed.
Some places have a lot, some not so much.
But in general the numbers have gone up.
But other things come and go, you know, and, and understanding
the dynamics of a of a relatively natural and healthy
ecosystem is really important for just for understanding how
ecosystems work and therefore understanding better about how
to conserve and manage them. Yeah, you made that point really
well about how things vary in, I guess, over time and from season
to season. And David Attenborough in the
film Ocean was at pains to say that conservation wasn't to the
exclusion of fishing, and fishing and conservation should
be the two things that can thrive side by side.
And how did you work with with fishermen around the the MPA and
the MPA's around Aaron? Yeah, that's a really good
point. And I think we've been able to
do that both on Aaron and where I used to previously work on the
Isle of Man is we actually engage the local fishing
community. We talked to them about their
views, but I think most importantly we work directly
with them. So we chartered their boats to
do the survey work, to do the scientific work.
And that just sort of changes the platform.
I think because you work alongside each other, you get to
know each other. You have a lot of time to have
conversations and, you know, to try and better understand each
other's perspectives. And what you tend to see is
that, you know, a sort of bit of give and take on both sides.
It just naturally evolves and but also a bit of respect.
And so, you know, on the Isle of Aaron, sorry, the Isle of Man
where I worked before, we, we did that with scallop dredgers
and they voluntarily started to create protected areas.
It's not always that easy. Not everybody's a fan.
But what happened on Aaron was we have this no take zone, which
is very small, right? I mean, it doesn't really affect
the local fisheries very much, but we have strong evidence that
that spillover like you see in the ocean film both from
animals. We know lobsters are moving in
and out of it. We tag them.
We know this is happening for sure.
We know there's high levels of breeding, particularly of
lobsters and scallops and that those larvae, those young
individuals are spreading out around the the surrounding area.
But what also was done on Aaron was to create spaces for
different types of fishing to exist.
So most of the South Aran Marine Protect area is open to fishing,
you know, 90, more than 95% of it.
And but it's open predominantly to low impact fishing.
So this is either diving for scallops, which is something
that's actually taken off in the area over the past few years.
And crab and lobster fishermen still, again, are allowed to
operate pretty much as they were.
There's on the very edges of this area, there's a little bit
of prawn trawling allowed with, you know, certain restrictions.
There's no scallop dredging allowed anywhere in that area
because that was considered to be incompatible with the
habitat. But yeah, the vast majority of
the area's still open to fishing and, and open to a lot of
different types of fishing as well.
And so if you go there, you know, particularly in summer,
you'll, you'll see quite a few fishing boats.
And what's really great is to know that's going on, but to be
monitoring the area and to see that it's becoming healthier and
healthier over the same time period.
So you've actually seen what's in the ocean field, you've seen
fisheries improving and the marine environment improving
because of this more nuanced approach to management.
Do you find that fishermen have knowledge that you can use in
your science? Oh, yeah, absolutely.
Like that's fundamental. And I find that in a lot of the
science that I do on Aaron, it was really crucial, particularly
when we were working out how to monitor the lobster population
because lobsters have very specific habitat requirements,
right? They don't just occur anywhere.
They need kind of rocky substrate on the seabed.
They, they like to be in, in crevices and in little holes and
things like that. And so when we were setting up
the monitoring programme for that, we worked just directly
with the local fishermen to say, where did you used to fish when
this area was open? And so, you know, it turns out
that was actually only about 10% of the area.
And so that's where we did the surveys and, and we as an
exercise, we tried fishing in other random places.
Oh, we caught nothing, right. So this guy knew what was going
on. They've been fishing there for
20 plus years. And so that was really
fundamental. But I think the other thing, the
great thing about working with fishermen is, you know, often
they have a long term perspective on how things have
changed. You know, this is a separate
project I'm working on down here in the Southwest on, on Pollock.
And, you know, we're we're interviewed fishermen with over
40 years of experience, so they can tell you about how things
have changed over that that long period of time.
And, and also they're at sea, like, you know, most fishermen
are at sea sort of probably 200 days a year or something like
that. And so they're seeing the
unusual things, you know, they'll say to you, Oh, yes,
well, you know, we saw an unusual amount of sunfish this
year or, oh, you know, we're catching like, lots of John Dory
now. We know we don't used to catch
any at all or whatever it is. So having those eyes on the
ocean is super important, particularly now for
understanding the effects of climate change.
Yeah, and he talks about monitoring, but how do you
communicate about whether an MPA marine protected area is
working? Yeah, that's a really good
question because a lot of people just assume it's about the
biology and and you know, I am a marine biologist and that's been
my predominant focus. So you go, you go in there, you,
you know, you monitor things through these methods like I've
said through diving through videos, etcetera.
And you see how the biodiversity is changing and and you compare
that to areas that are unprotected because you need to
have those controls as well. And that's super important
because that's the basis of what you're trying to achieve.
You know, you're trying to achieve these more biologically
healthy ecosystems. But then it's also important to
know, you know, what else is the MPA doing?
So how is it affecting the, you know, the local community?
And on Aaron, that's we've done some studies on this and you
know, one of the things that I found really encouraging was the
amount of pride that there is in the local community about the
fact that they've protected their local marine environment,
that they, you know, that they're known all over the
world, to be honest, for doing this.
There's a great case study, even more so now after the ocean
film, but also, and they genuinely say that it brings
tourists to the island. You know that that now there's a
coast has a visitor centre for example, and there's a lot of
information up around the place. And so that kind of leads you on
to another element, which is the economic benefits of it.
So in this case, you know, if it's benefiting tourism, then
that's great, but also it's created jobs in marine
conservation, it's created, you know, there's a diving business
that's set up now and wildlife watching tours and things like
this. So monitoring those different
elements are all really important.
And so I think what you want is a, you know, a well-rounded sort
of package of success for a really, really good marine
protected area. I think the other, the only
other thing I'll add is, and I'll be biassed because I'm a
scientist. But yeah, as I said, I've had
over 20 students over the years go up and do field work on the
Isle of Arran. And often it's been for either
their masters projects or their PhDs.
And I know for a fact that they've all had a brilliant
time. I mean, they all come and tell
me how fantastic it was to work there, how motivational it was
to work with a community that was so engaged in marine
conservation. And pretty much all of those
students now have gone on to have their own careers and
sometimes been very successful and very influential.
But they will point back to that experience on Aaron as being
quite sort of fundamental to the development of their careers.
So you get this like human capital benefit as well and I
don't think that's as well documented as some of the other
things. That's the Lamblash Bay no take
zone and S Arran marine protected area.
Do they show that fishing and consolation are compatible?
Yeah, absolutely. So you know like I said, most of
those the no take zone is, is no fishing, but that's a very small
part. It's like 1% of the whole area,
but the the rest of it is open to fishing.
So, you know, it does allow these low impact fishing methods
to still continue Crab and lobster potting.
They've actually tried as well potting for scallops using the
scallop lights or scallop disco method and then things like
diving for scallops as well. And so, yeah, absolutely.
Like it's, it's a fantastic example of this zonal approach.
As long as the method that you're using is compatible with
the things you're trying to protect, then that's going to be
a way forward. But we've also seen, you know,
like spillover of lobsters out of the no tech zone.
And we also know that these really healthy populations of
certain things like scallops and, and, and lobsters are
breeding at exceptionally high levels in the protected areas.
And so very hard to prove that that's actually benefiting
fisheries. But we have seen in that in the
area, a general improvement. For example, the lobster catch
rates have gone up, you know, over the last decade.
And so there's a lot of good evidence that it is providing,
you know, a big range of benefits to fisheries as well as
conservation. And in Aaron, it seemed like a
clear cut case of stopping the destruction of seabed habitats.
How can communities be involved in other places where they maybe
don't know what's happening underwater?
Yeah. So that's another great question
and I would point to the Coastal Communities Network as a great
example of how that can happen. So the Coastal Communities
Network is, as the name suggests, a network of about 25
organisations now I think around Scotland who were inspired by
the story of what happened on Aaron.
So that, and they would, turned out there were a lot of other
little groups around Scotland. Originally it was only maybe
half a dozen. And some of these groups were
tiny, like they were, you know, two people who met when they
were walking their dog and they said, oh, look, you know,
there's this pollution in our Bay, like what can we do about
it? And they'd set up a tiny little
organisation and that has really grown from there.
And so, as I said, now there's 25 other coastal community sort
of organisations around Scotland.
They don't all do what what's happening on our own coast.
They have their own specific sort of issues that they're
dealing with. Some of them are, you know,
protesting against salmon farms that they think are in the wrong
place. Sometimes it's marine litter,
sometimes it's conflicts between different types of fishing and
you know, I go to their meetings every couple of years and it's
so inspirational to be part of them because you, I've seen them
grow over the last decade. And like I say, you know, now a
number of those organisations have set up their own science
programmes and some of them focus a lot on science
communication and outreach. So they've got their own little
remotely controlled underwater vehicles or Rovs that they'll
sort of fly down to the seabed and, you know, make some really
cool footage. But others have actually worked
directly with, with the Scottish Government to help with surveys
again, because they have that local knowledge.
And some of the others have made films, for example.
So it's, it's absolutely possible.
It takes commitment and perseverance, but you know, I
think as we the title of the article in the NBA magazine is
called Marine Conservation begins at home.
And I think for me, that's a really powerful message.
Like, yes, you can, you know, you can sign petitions to say,
let's change this across the world or whatever.
But don't forget also just to look after your own backyard.
You know, that's where you can probably as an individual or as
a, as a small group of people really make the biggest
difference. It is inspirational.
Bryce, we might have a clue about this one, but can you tell
us what your favourite sea creature is and why?
So you know, I do get asked this question occasionally and
everyone assumes it's a scallop and they are definitely right up
there. But I think my favourite
creature is a blue Marlin. And this is inspired by seeing a
few of them when, when I was growing up in Papua New Guinea
from the boat. And then, you know, obviously as
documentaries have sort of come on board, I'm always remember
seeing them in, in Blue Planet 1 and 2, you know, feeding in high
definition. I just think they're the most
magnificent creatures. They're pretty weird, right?
Fish with a great big spike on its nose.
But I just, I just find them just fantastic, like, beautiful,
magnificent. They can swim incredible
distances. And, you know, I feel like they
kind of laud it over the ocean. Apart from humans, they don't
have any other sort of threats, anything else to worry about.
So yeah, I think a blue island would would have to top my list.
And what advice would you have for a young person who wants to
be a marine biologist? Wow.
OK, so I think first of all, I'm going to say follow your dream.
You know, that's certainly what I did.
And to begin with, I wasn't the world's greatest student, but I
was like just so determined that I was going to make this work.
And I'm lucky enough that I have.
So don't give up if that's what you want to do.
You know, if that's your passion, follow your dream.
Like just keep at it. I would also say identify your,
you know, your special skill, your strengths, because being a
marine biologist is many things. You know, I think some people
think it's just about scuba diving and teaching dolphins how
to speak or something like this, right.
But and, and certainly there are positions for field based marine
biologists, but you can also do a lot working in the lab.
You know, one of the things now that's really developing as a
method is environmental DNA or Edna where we can take a water
droplet and find out what species have been in that order.
You might, for example, be really good with computers.
And so actually those numerical skills are super important and
modelling what's going on in in the marine environment is
absolutely vital. Or you might be more creative,
you know, you might be, you might be a great writer or you
might be, you know, somebody who likes to take images or make
films or whatever. Even social media, you know,
that's super important for communicating the, you know,
some of the issues that the world's oceans face.
And so you can be a whole range of different things if you know,
depending on your skill and still benefit marine biology and
marine conservation. And then I guess my final third
thing would just be perseverance, because it's not
an easy thing to succeed in. And you're going to have some
ups and downs and there's probably times when you're going
to feel like quitting and doing something a bit easier.
But, you know, if that's your passion, if that's your dream,
then just don't give up. Keep going.
And I promise you, you will have some fantastic rewards.
Like, yes, you know, sometimes I have to try and balance
spreadsheets and I spend a lot of time answering emails.
But other times I'm swimming with blue sharks or, you know,
watching fin whales next to the boat, like, or even going to the
premiere of Oceans with David Attenborough last week.
I mean, whoever expected that would happen.
So you know, persevere, follow your dreams and identify your
special skills. Great.
Thank you. Well, it's great to speak to
you, Bryce. It's inspirational work and it
really reinforces this message that given a chance and with
local effort as well, the marine environment will bounce back
really quickly. So yeah, once again, thanks very
much and we look forward to following your work in the
future. Thank you very much.
My pleasure. Become a member of the Marine
Biological Association and be part of the global community
advocating for the ocean. You will receive 4 copies a year
of our beautifully produced magazine, The Marine Biologist
and a host of other benefits. We have a special offer on.
You can save 25% on MBA membership using the code Ocean
25. This offers valid from the 7th
to the 31st of May 2025 and is for monthly payments only.
We hope you enjoyed this edition of the podcast.
If you want to learn more than join the Marine Biological
Association and be part of our global membership community.
Simply visit www.nba.ac.uk and discover a membership category
that suits you.