The Marine Monitoring Coordination Group (MMCG) is a Defra led
group originally set up to support the work highlighted through the
government's first report on marine stewardship, Safeguarding Our
Seas (May 2002).
This 'Safeguarding our Seas' report highlighted the need for
finding ways to:
- optimise the way UK marine monitoring meets current and
emergent national and international legal requirements and
obligations, including those under the EU Water Framework and EC
Habitat Directives, OSPAR (Biodiversity Strategy), Global Ocean
Observing Systems (GOOS) and EU Fisheries Regulations;
- promote the closer integration of our marine environmental
monitoring framework and the co-ordination of sector-orientated
monitoring (i.e. Marine Processes and Climate, Marine Environmental
Quality, Marine Habitats and Species and Marine Fisheries)
and;
- encourage a collaborative and co-ordinated approach to
data gathering, and the interchange of data, between
sectorally-based monitoring programmes.
To meet some of these aims the MMCG provided assistance on the
production of the Defra Charting Progress report released in March
2005 through producing four reports based on sector-orientated
monitoring (i.e. Marine Processes and Climate, Marine Environmental
Quality, Marine Habitats and Species and Marine Fisheries). JNCC
co-ordinated the overall production of the sector report on
Marine Habitats and Species, ( PDF, 9.7mb).
The Charting Progress report has highlighted a number of gaps
both in our knowledge and understanding of the marine environment,
and the way we gather and coordinate this information. The MMCG
is progressing work to redesign the collection, coordination
and reporting of marine data. This is being carried out
overall through the Marine Data Information Partnership
(MDIP).
JNCC continues to represent the Marine Habitats and Species
sector and provide advice on biodiversity to the MMCG.