Up Frenchman's creek: A case study on managingcommercial fishing in an English special area ofconservation and its implications

The Habitats Directive has matured over the years since ithas been implemented. One of the last industries to feel itsapplication is the commercial sea fishing industry: theindustry which according to the Royal Commission onEnvironmental Pollution has the most direct effect on themarine ecosystem. This article outlines one of the earliestapplications of the directive to commercial fishing in theUK's Fal and Helford Special Area of Conservation (SAC),where a national NGO brought pressure to bear on local andnational administrators over failure to implement thedirective in a European marine site. It goes on to describehow different regulators took differing approaches to theirroles and how the lack of enforcement capacity of onestatutory nature conservation agency meant that the NGOhad to threaten a complaint to the European Commissionand potential infraction proceedings against the UK beforethe European marine site was closed to damaging fishingoperations. It then explains how this test case has percolated into UK fisheries management around the UK, leading to the closure of damaging fisheries in Welsh marine sites, policy changes over the management of English sites and a growing debate over whether the proper application of the Directive and other European environmental legislation to marine fisheries is inevitable in the rest of the UK and the European Union. Commercial fishing will undoubtedlycontinue in UK waters but it is likely that those fishingmethods which have a significant impact on the marineenvironment will face an increasing burden of regulationwhere they wish to continue to operate in marine protectedareas