The seas around our islands are amazing. The life it sustains is abundant and spectacular – let’s face it a visit to one of the UK’s seabird breeding colonies should be on everyone’s top 50 things to do! Here's a picture of gannets off Troupe Head.
But that life is also fragile, the sea’s bounty is something we can’t take for granted. The shock of oil-soaked wildlife and wrecked livelihoods have been filling our screens from the Gulf states of the USA but we don’t need to go nearly so far to find signs of the impact we are having on the marine environment. Around our shores the risks of dumping, spilling, building and harvesting our seas in unsustainable ways are measured in the loss of the abundance of marine life.
The good news is that we are not alone in wishing to see a better future for our seas. With your help we’ve been successful in helping to get better laws – the UK Marine and Coastal Access Act and the Marine (Scotland) Act. These should be a powerful signals that we must change the way we are treating our seas – the challenge, now, is to move from campaigning for new laws to pressing for them to be implemented.
The summer is perhaps a time when more of us get a chance to visit the coast – let’s call it the seaside! From sandcastles to rock-pooling, from relaxing to diving there are a myriad of ways the sea touches our lives. For communities that depend on the sea for their livelihoods the relationship is deeper still. Tell us what the sea means to you – and find out more about what we are doing to Safeguard our sea life.
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