The island must balance marine biodiversity and sustainable fishing in order to get the best out of our territorial waters, Tynwald will be told next week.

Environment Minister Geoffrey Boot MHK will lay his report on a management plan for the three mile zone of the Manx territorial sea before the first sitting of 2020.

The report sets out goals for the Department of the Environment, Food and Agriculture to achieve, as well as provide a three-phase plan beyond 2022 to both protect the island’s marine biology and to resolve how islanders best work in the sea.

Having started in 2019, the DEFA will continue its work to establish a mechanism for the comanagement of the scallop industry, develop an Inshore Fisheries Zones Management Policy and ensure that legislation and agreements are fit for purpose.

The second phase from 2020 to 2022 will see the establishment of the Isle of Man Fishermen’s Association which will include developing a memorandum of understanding between the DEFA and the IMFA.

Other work in phase two will focus on how the government and the association work to manage the island’s marine life and an investigation into a carbon audit for the fisheries.

The third phase will focus on assessing the inclusion of other fisheries into the management plan.

The island has sole jurisdiction within its three mile limit for fisheries management.

However, the 2012 Fisheries Management Agreement requires DEFA to consult with UK authorities before any new fisheries management measures can be introduced in the three to 12 mile limit.

Mr Boot praised the island as a ’world leader’ in scallop fisheries management and noted other achievements such as being the first British Isles jurisdiction to protect the basking shark and designating 52% of the island’s inshore marine area as marine nature reserves.

He added: ’The territorial sea has sustained our island for centuries, providing food and transport, and influencing the weather and climate that is such a part of the Manx environment.

Sustainability

’Increasingly we are aware that the world’s oceans are under human pressure, from over exploitation of fisheries to the effects of climate change and, as a community, we must seek way to protect our own seas, and sustain the goods and services they provide.’

The department said that it wants to provide opportunities to develop innovative businesses in Manx seas including in the seafood and tourism and leisure sectors.

It also wants to ’provide opportunities for the marine sector to be included in, and contribute to, both biosphere and climate change management plans and outcomes’.

In the report, the DEFA has also made referenced to the ’additional inclusive of other sectors and relevant stakeholders over time’.

While that is not advanced further, the government wants to allow gas extraction from the Manx sea bed and has explored locating a wind farm in the sea.

Both of these would potentially be off the coast near Maughold.