Marine Reserves Coalition

Here’s a prediction: the next UK government will do great things for global marine protection.

At this stage in a general election campaign it’s sometimes hard to find something that politicians wearing differently coloured rosettes can agree on, but with an unprecedented bunch of manifesto commitments, there’s a growing certainty that the next UK government will be an ocean champion.

If I said to you that the UK government was responsible for rare sea turtles, endangered sharks, tropical coral reefs and quite possibly more penguins than any other country, you might think I was talking about some aquariums or zoos. It’s certainly not what you think about in UK seas, especially at this grey time of year (though of course we do have visiting turtles, many shark species, cold water corals, and puffins as penguin-wannabes). But across the world the UK has ‘overseas territories’. They are relics of a turbulent past when flags were planted across the world, and mostly, these days, they are islands – like Bermuda, Pitcairn, and Ascension. So, in turn, the amazing wildlife in the seas around these islands is effectively ‘British’.