scholarly journals Protecting the North Sea: Brown Bank

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oceana ◽  
Silvia García ◽  
Helena Álvarez ◽  
Allison L. Perry ◽  
Jorge Blanco ◽  
...  

Located at the centre of the southern North Sea, Brown Bankridge formed by a series of large-scale sandbanks in Dutch and UK waters. It is a recognised area of ecological interest, due mainly to the high abundance of cetaceans and seabirds in the area. To date, however, Brown Bank has been granted very limited protection. The UK side is protected for a single species (harbour porpoise), within the Southern North Sea MPA. No protection is in place for the Dutch side, although it qualifies for inclusion in the Natura 2000 network due to the high numbers of seabirds that it supports, particularly common guillemot and razorbill. Oceana carried out two research surveys in 2016 and 2017, to gather information about benthic species and communities.In total, 204 taxa were identified. These taxa included nine priority species for conservation, and a range of commercially fished species, including fishes for which Brown Bank provides spawning or nursery habitat. The most noteworthy discovery was the presence of biogenic reefs formed by ross worm (Sabellaria spinulosa), a sedimentary polychaete. These reefs covered a total area of 1023 m2 on the Dutch side of Brown Bank, and hosted a variety of associated species, including various crabs, common dragonet, and lesser spotted dogfish. Such biogenic reefs have nearly disappeared from Dutch waters, and ross worm reefs were previously thought to have been long-extinct in the area.

2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 47-65 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul F. Green ◽  
Ian R. Duddy ◽  
Peter Japsen

AbstractWe present a consistent synthesis of palaeothermal (apatite fission track analysis (AFTA) and vitrinite reflectance) data from UK Southern North Sea wells with the regional pattern of exhumation defined from sonic velocity data. Cenozoic exhumation across most of the region began in the Paleocene between 63 and 59 Ma. Amounts of removed section are around 1 km across the offshore platform, increasing to 2 km or more on the Sole Pit axis. Neogene exhumation within this area began between 22 and 15 Ma, and led to removal of up to 1 km of section. Along the eastern flank of the Sole Pit axis, sonic data define a pre-Chalk event, and AFTA data from these wells show that exhumation began between 120 and 93 Ma. This timing correlates with events defined from AFTA data in the Sorgenfrei–Tornquist Zone, further east, presumably reflecting a response to regional tectonic stresses. East of the Sole Pit axis, AFTA and sonic velocities suggest that Neogene exhumation dominates, while further east towards the central parts of the North Sea Mesozoic sediments appear to be at maximum burial today except for local effects related to salt movement. The multiple episodes of exhumation and burial defined here have important implications for exploration.


2013 ◽  
Vol 92 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 159-164
Author(s):  
F.P. Wesselingh ◽  
A.C. Janse ◽  
M. Vervoenen ◽  
F.A.D. van Nieulande

AbstractThree specimens of the large-sized Eocene campanilid gastropod genus Campanile have been dredged from the modern sea floor in the Bruine Bank area (North Sea, Dutch sector). The material is identified here as Campanile parisiense rarinodosum, a subspecies hitherto unknown from the North Sea Basin. All three shells are strongly abraded, reflecting their secondary derivation. The new finds suggest that fossiliferous strata of probably late Lutetian (middle Eocene) age are represented in the southern North Sea Basin, situated most likely in the southeastern part of the UK sector. The present material of Campanile must have been reworked into the Dutch sector via Quaternary rivers. The occurrence of Campanile parisiense rarinodosum would indicate close biogeographic ties between the North Sea and the western French Atlantic basins during the late Lutetian. These new records thus shed light on the palaeogeography of the area during two widely separated geological time slices.


1965 ◽  
Vol 59 (3) ◽  
pp. 505-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Young

The possible presence of very large petroleum and natural gas reserves in the area beneath the North Sea is currently the subject of intense investigation. If confirmed, as seems likely in at least some localities, this occurrence will raise legal problems of considerable interest and complexity. For the North Sea is not merely an oilfield covered by water: for centuries it has been one of the world's major fishery regions and the avenue to and from the world's busiest seaports. Thus all three of the present principal uses of the sea—fishing, navigation, and the exploitation of submarine resources—promise to meet for the first time on a large scale in an area where all are of major importance. The process of reconciling the various interests at stake will provide the first thoroughgoing test of the adequacy and acceptability of the general principles laid down in the 1958 Geneva Convention on the Continental Shelf and should add greatly to the practice and precedents available in this developing branch of the law. In the present article an attempt is made to review some of the geographical and economic considerations involved in the North Sea situation, to note some of the technical and legal developments that have already taken place, and to consider these elements in the light of the various interests and legal principles concerned.


Author(s):  
R. S. Wimpenny

1. Diameter measurements of Rhizosolenia styliformis from the Antarctic, the subtropical Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and from the North Sea and neighbouring waters have made it appear necessary to set up two varieties, oceanica and semispina, in addition to the type of the species R. styliformis. The type as I describe it has been called var. longispina by Hustedt, but elsewhere it has often been figured as the var. oceanica of this paper. Var. semispina is synonymous with the form represented by Karsten as R. semispina Hensen. It differs from R. semispina as drawn by Hensen and its synonym R. hebetata forma semispina Gran, but is thought likely to be linked by intermediates. If this is so R. hebetata may have to be extended to include and suppress R. styliformis, as var. semispina is linked to the type by intermediates. Var. oceanica has no intermediate forms and, if R. hebetata is to be extended, this variety should be established as a separate species.2. Var. oceanica is absent from the southern North Sea and appears to be an indicator species related to oceanic inflow.3. Auxospore formation was observed for the type in the southern North Sea in 1935 and biometric observations suggest that a period of 3-4 years elapsed between the production of auxospore generations in that area. Outside the southern North Sea for the type, measurements give no indication of auxospore generations occurring at intervals exceeding a year. While auxospore formation has been seen in var. oceanica from the Shetlands area samples of June 1935 and July 1938, this phenomenon has not been observed for var. semispina.


2010 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-51 ◽  
Author(s):  
Henrik Jensen ◽  
Anna Rindorf ◽  
Peter J. Wright ◽  
Henrik Mosegaard

Abstract Jensen, H., Rindorf, A., Wright, P. J., and Mosegaard, H. 2011. Inferring the location and scale of mixing between habitat areas of lesser sandeel through information from the fishery. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, 68: 43–51. Sandeels are small pelagic fish that play an important role in the diet of a range of natural predators. Because of their limited capture by traditional survey gear, little is known about their large-scale distribution or the degree of mixing between habitat areas. Detailed information collected directly from the fishery was used to map fishing grounds, which were then assumed to reflect the foraging habitat of the species. Length distributions from individual hauls were used to assess differences in the distributions as a function of distance between samples. Sandeel foraging habitat covered some 5% of the total area of the North Sea. Mixing between neighbouring fishing grounds was too low to eliminate differences in length distributions at distances between grounds down to 5 km. Within fishing grounds, mixing was sufficient to eliminate differences in length distributions at scales <28 km but insufficient at greater distances. The lack of mixing between grounds may result in large differences in sandeel abundance among adjacent fishing grounds. Further, notable abundance at one end of an extensive fishing ground is not necessarily indicative of similar abundance at its other end.


2021 ◽  
Vol 150 (4) ◽  
pp. A80-A81
Author(s):  
Jakob Tougaard ◽  
Thomas Folegot ◽  
Christ de Jong ◽  
Emily T. Griffiths ◽  
Alexander M. von Benda-Beckmann ◽  
...  

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 841-863 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Brenner ◽  
U. Braeckman ◽  
M. Le Guitton ◽  
F. J. R. Meysman

Abstract. It has been previously proposed that alkalinity release from sediments can play an important role in the carbonate dynamics on continental shelves, lowering the pCO2 of seawater and hence increasing the CO2 uptake from the atmosphere. To test this hypothesis, sedimentary alkalinity generation was quantified within cohesive and permeable sediments across the North Sea during two cruises in September 2011 (basin-wide) and June 2012 (Dutch coastal zone). Benthic fluxes of oxygen (O2), alkalinity (AT) and dissolved inorganic carbon (DIC) were determined using shipboard closed sediment incubations. Our results show that sediments can form an important source of alkalinity for the overlying water, particularly in the shallow southern North Sea, where high AT and DIC fluxes were recorded in near-shore sediments of the Belgian, Dutch and German coastal zone. In contrast, fluxes of AT and DIC are substantially lower in the deeper, seasonally stratified, northern part of the North Sea. Based on the data collected, we performed a model analysis to constrain the main pathways of alkalinity generation in the sediment, and to quantify how sedimentary alkalinity drives atmospheric CO2 uptake in the southern North Sea. Overall, our results show that sedimentary alkalinity generation should be regarded as a key component in the CO2 dynamics of shallow coastal systems.


2004 ◽  
Vol 61 (8) ◽  
pp. 1398-1409 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morten Vinther ◽  
Stuart A. Reeves ◽  
Kenneth R. Patterson

Abstract Fishery management advice has traditionally been given on a stock-by-stock basis. Recent problems in implementing this advice, particularly for the demersal fisheries of the North Sea, have highlighted the limitations of the approach. In the long term, it would be desirable to give advice that accounts for mixed-fishery effects, but in the short term there is a need for approaches to resolve the conflicting management advice for different species within the same fishery, and to generate catch or effort advice that accounts for the mixed-species nature of the fishery. This paper documents a recent approach used to address these problems. The approach takes the single-species advice for each species in the fishery as a starting point, then attempts to resolve it into consistent catch or effort advice using fleet-disaggregated catch forecasts in combination with explicitly stated management priorities for each stock. Results are presented for the groundfish fisheries of the North Sea, and these show that the development of such approaches will also require development of the ways in which catch data are collected and compiled.


Author(s):  
Juan Gea Bermúdez ◽  
Kaushik Das ◽  
Hardi Koduvere ◽  
Matti Juhani Koivisto

This paper proposes a mathematical model to simulate Day-ahead markets of large-scale multi-energy systems with high share of renewable energy. Furthermore, it analyses the importance of including unit commitment when performing such analysis. The results of the case study, which is performed for the North Sea region, show the influence of massive renewable penetration in the energy sector and increasing electrification of the district heating sector towards 2050, and how this impacts the role of other energy sources such as thermal and hydro. The penetration of wind and solar is likely to challenge the need for balancing in the system as well as the profitability of thermal units. The degree of influence of the unit commitment approach is found to be dependent on the configuration of the energy system. Overall, including unit commitment constraints with integer variables leads to more realistic behaviour of the units, at the cost of increasing considerably the computational time. Relaxing integer variables reduces significantly the computational time, without highly compromising the accuracy of the results. The proposed model, together with the insights from the study case, can be specially useful for system operators for optimal operational planning.


Author(s):  
Chadi Mallat ◽  
Alistair Corbett ◽  
Glyn Harris ◽  
Marc Lefranc

It is reputed in the Oil & Gas industry that marine growth is overestimated in the North Sea. Can we quantify this overestimation to better tackle the challenges marine growth incurs? This paper provides insight into the intrinsic and diverse nature of marine growth. It documents the biofouling development and the factors that affect it globally. Focus is made on fixed steel platforms in the North Sea approaching the end of their economic lives. A methodology to quantify the weight of marine growth is proposed and illustrated. 28 years after its installation, the weight of marine growth accumulated on Valhall 2/4G jacket located in Southern North Sea is evaluated based on the proposed method. It is confirmed that the current regulations overestimate the weight of marine growth in the North Sea.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document