Activities

2. Monitoring Requirements of Coastal Zone User Groups

Monitoring activities/programmes designed to be carried out by the scientist and the coastal zone user, while simultaneously fulfilling the demands of the legislator, serve different purposes and needs though they necessarily have a common content. Therefore the process of reaching consensus on what are acceptable/unacceptable impacts is a crucial one in devising monitoring programmes.
Monitoring programmes concerned to uphold Best Environmental Practice (BEP) based on the best scientific knowledge and methods compatible with Best Available Techniques (BAT) therefore target three main user-groups, each of which is responsible for contributing and extracting different types of information.

A. The legislator

In the context of coastal zone users (tourism, aquaculture, other industries) and the international and national legislative requirements in respect of the environment, monitoring is used as a regulatory and management tool to control the environmental impact, i.e., to ensure that the activity in question does not have an unacceptable impact on the natural environment.

B. The Scientist

The aim of the scientist is to achieve a scientifically sound BEP and therefore s/he must be aware of and take into account all the latest findings in order to update the previous best knowledge available, as well as the latest techniques and methodologies. There are different organisations (GESAMP, OSPAR, HELCOM, NORTH SEA TASK FORCE) working in the same thematic area (Protection of the Marine Environment) with different geographical focus and remit, all endeavouring to come up with BEP in areas adjacent to but relevant to aquaculture. Since 1995¹, the OSPAR Joint Assessment and Monitoring Programme (JAMP) has produced a series of very detailed and precise Guidelines, concerning mandatory and voluntary parameters (monitoring of organisms, seawater and sediments)of which the following outline monitoring programmes containing recommendations relevant to coastal zone operations: JAMP Guidelines for nutrients, oxygen, chlorophyll, eutrophication, fish waste, toxic effects, biological effects general and specific, benthos and sediments. These Guidelines give general guidance on sampling and analysis but also include technical annexes with the aim of ensuring comparable results between monitoring programmes.
Environmental Quality Objectives (EQOs) along with corresponding Environmental Quality Standards (EQSs) have been developed in response to the environmental legislative measures that have been adopted. Environmental authorities propose EQOs for the industry and decide, for example, which water bodies can be used in the cultivation of aquatic animals. Environmental criteria established for these are faunal benthic composition and various standard quality recommendations for bottom sediment and water column quality. Commonly defined EQOs include, for instance, the safeguarding of water quality, the protection of aquatic life, the protection of the consumer (i.e., food safety), for medicines, as well as the protection of the aesthetic and recreational quality of the water body.

The creation of EQSs for selected List II substances of national concern is a statutory obligation under the EU Dangerous Substances Directive (76/464/EEC) and comes under the jurisdiction of the responsible national authority. The establishment of Quality standards is very much related to both environment and product quality, and also to good husbandry techniques, in order to help prevent disease outbreak, for instance. In the UK, a joint EQO/EQS approach has been encouraged for the management of environmental quality since the early 1990s.
Methods for deriving quality criteria for sediments are less well developed (SEPA, 1999) though there are JAMP Guidelines for Monitoring Contaminants in Sediments (JAMP, 1999) as well as the Norwegian Standard for Environmental Monitoring of Marine Fish Farms (NS 9410:2000) which focuses on methods for the determination of bottom conditions at and in the vicinity of fish farms (SFT, 2000).
Thus both EQOs and EQSs, as well as extremely detailed Guidelines have been and are being developed in strenuous attempts to satisfy legislative requirements and scientific principles and are used in setting BEP standards and targets.
Scientists are responsible for defining the parameters of interest to the monitoring programme, based on the types of effluent expected and their environmental effects and defining acceptable levels of contamination.

3. The Optimal Monitoring Approach

Optimal procedures do exist but they are not affordable, they are sometimes not applicable, and they are also not complete (EQSs covering both water and sediment are not available for some elements of the discharge (SEPA, 1999). In an ideal world, it would be possible and perhaps even desirable to monitor all the necessary parameters and the main environmental objectives could be handled according to the procedures detailed in the Guidelines, Manuals and Best Environmental Practices in the works already referred to.
But the real world has different priorities. It is relevant to note that the 1999 report "Importance of Long Time Series Data for the interpretation of Monitoring data and the preparation of Assessments" of the ICES Working Group on Environmental Assessment and Monitoring Strategies (WGEAMS) reiterated that integrated environmental assessments require a broad range of data on the physical, chemical and biological conditions in marine ecosystems, as pointed out above. The Report also draws attention to the fact that there is an increasing demand for environmental assessments at national and international level which require long time series data, at the very moment when funding is being cut drastically all over Europe (Report of the ICES Advisory Committee on the Marine Environment, 1999).

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