Research Expeditions

Chief Scientist
Paul Whomersley 
Cefas Lowestoft Laboratory

St Helena
Ascension Island 

52 days

November 2021 - January 2022

Blue Belt Big Ocean Survey

Research Programme Summary and Objectives
The UK government’s Blue Belt programme supports the UK Overseas Territories with the protection and sustainable management of their marine environments. Supported by the delivery bodies, the Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science, and Marine Management Organisation, the programme aims to put in place protection and sustainable management measures for over 4 million square kilometres of oceans around the Overseas Territories.

Science Questions

The programme supports the Overseas Territories to:

1. improve scientific understanding of the marine environment to inform management;
2. develop and implement evidence-based, tailored marine management strategies including surveillance and enforcement; and
3. ensure management is sustainable and long term

Expedition Summary

Over the past three years four research surveys have been undertaken onboard RRS James Clark Ross, FPV Pharos and RRS Discovery (DY099 and DY100) which have explored oceanic deep-water and seamount habitats within the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) of several of the UK Overseas Territories (UK OTs) currently included within the Blue Belt (BB) Programme. 

While this has improved knowledge of these relatively unexplored and unknown habitats. Further information is still required to enable the development of evidence-based management and protection strategies and the setting of ecological baselines which can be used to measure the effectiveness of managed and protected areas.

This proposal describes a Cefas lead research survey aimed at acquiring a 2nd and in some cases a 3rd data point from oceanic deep-water habitats from around key UK OTs. Acquiring this additional information is crucial to increasing our understanding of these environments and the development of ecological baselines on which any future monitoring and management strategies can be based. These baselines (once developed) would provide an essential means of assessing the effectiveness of management and protection strategies associated with marine protected areas.

Many of the key fisheries species (blue nose, bigeye tuna, yellow fin tuna, and numerous shark and marlin species) that are being considered for future management and protection under the auspices of the current Blue Belt Programme are associated with deep-water habitats such as seamounts and ocean ridges. 

However, there is still a lack of understanding of how these key species utilise these habitats throughout their life cycles. It has been demonstrated that these offshore habitats also support a comparable level of diversity to that observed from inshore habitats, although there is also a lack of understanding of how these oceanic deep-water habitats are connected and therefore influence the inshore habitats of oceanic islands.

In addition to the core objectives of the Blue Belt programme, collecting both biological and physical data from these oceanic deep-water systems will provide us with the opportunity to contribute to existing and new initiatives that are aiming to address global issues such as climate change, ocean acidification, carbon sequestration, marine litter and the exploitation of high-seas fish stocks.

Aims and Objectives:

The aims and objectives of this survey are:

• To establish monitoring stations around key oceanic deep-water habitats within the Exclusive Economic Zones and managed areas of UK Overseas Territory’s.
• To assess potential impacts of ongoing activities within impacts of known activities
• To increase our understanding of the functionality of oceanic deep-water systems and how these habitats are utilised by key species.
• To augment existing time series data that already exist.
• To create an evidence, base which can be used to develop effective management and protection strategies.
• To collect data and information that can be used to assess the effectiveness of implemented management and protection strategies.
• To increase our understanding of the connectivity between oceanic deep-water and inshore habitats.
• To collect data and information from oceanic deep-water environments that can contribute to addressing global issues such as climate change, ocean acidification, carbon sequestration, marine litter and the exploitation of high-seas fish stocks.
• To increase Overseas Territory engagement and support, provide passenger transits and the opportunity for Blue Belt staff to have an on-island presence.
• To align and ground truth overseas territory illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (OT IUU) risk profiles.
• To take the opportunity to further develop proof of concept of remote sensing and new technologies linked to enforcement and compliance.

Further Information:

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