 web.jpg "Edible crab (Credit Rachel Coppock)")
Edible crab (Credit Rachel Coppock)
Boulders and overhangs provide shelter for all types of fish, crabs, and lobsters as well as tiny seaslugs and anemones.
Ballan and goldsinny wrasse swim among branching sponges, soft corals.
Around five miles off the coast between Folkestone and Dover, the seabed drops into an area of huge boulder strewn bowls, with exposed greensand forming craggy ridges around the sides. Lobsters and crabs shelter under deep ledges while ballan and goldsinny wrasse swim among branching sponges, soft corals and colonies of sea beard and hornwrack. Delicate orange anemones and feather duster worms are picked out against the small white blankets of sea squirts, while hermit crabs and mini squat lobsters scurry around the boulders.
Out beyond these rugged seabed depressions, there are areas of soft muddy seabed consolidated by sandy tubes constructed by both honeycomb worms and ross worms. These closely related species do not normally live together, but here they create reefs together which provide valuable habitat.
This recommended Marine Conservation Zone has been put forward for potential designation in 2013, government consultation pending.
We need you to urge Defra to remain committed to designating this site in 2013 and to put in place appropriate management as soon as possible.
This site is proposed for designation for 2013 to protect five of the eight habitats and species recommended by stakeholders. Defra has indicated that three of the features put forward by stakeholders (rock habitat, blue mussel beds and subtidal sands and gravels) require further evidence before they will be considered for protection under designation of this site.
This site is important- it contains unusual mixtures of mud habitat with rossworm reef and honeycomb worm reef, not known to occur anywhere else in the region. Furthermore, this site has been identified as being at risk from damage and degradation due to the presence of vulnerable habitats and species within the site, in particular it contains one of only two examples in the region of the fragile sponge and anemone communities on outcrops of harder greensand rock which is rare in a region where soft chalk is more widespread. The rMCZ therefore represents a critical element of representativity and replication in the MCZ network.
Kent Wildlife Trust has Seasearch data backed up by photographs and video footage of these habitats and you can see a copy of this video on this page. Multibeam sonar and backscatter data by Channel Coastal Observatory, ground-truthed with Kent WT’s Seasearch data to produce a detailed habitat map covering a small part of this rMCZ and provides evidence for ‘moderate energy circalittoral rock’. Defra also commissioned additional survey work of this site in 2012. This data has not been used as part of this consultation.
We need you to urge Defra to remain committed to designating this site in 2013 and to put in place appropriate management as soon as possible. Defra should also commit to gathering additional evidence to support the designation of the remaining habitats and species recommended by stakeholders as soon as possible.
Dive video of this site
Contains UKHO Law of the Sea data. Crown copyright and database right and contains Ordnance Survey Data Crown copyright and database 2012
Other nearby MCZs
Downloads
| Filename | File size |
|---|---|
| Folkestone Pomerania.pdf | 208.61 KB |