Last  updated

28 November 2009

SKOMER MARINE NATURE RESERVE – WALES’ ONLY MNR

A SHORT HISTORY

Skomer Island’s early inhabitants, from prehistoric Celts to farmers struggling to make agriculture viable on a small offshore Welsh island in the early twentieth century, must have found the surrounding sea little more than a source of constant difficulties.  South-westerly storm swells and the racing tides of Jack Sound, the narrow but intimidating stretch of water that separates the island from the mainland, are challenging enough in a powerful modern boat, but how much harder it must have been in a rudimentary oar-powered open vessel.

Although the prehistoric residents exploited the island’s nesting seabirds, little evidence has been found to indicate that the largely inaccessible shores provided a regular source of food.  When fishing did develop, it was from the mainland.  By the first half of the twentieth century, up to twenty boats were based at Martin’s Haven near the western extremity of the Marloes Peninsula. But the Marloes fishermen of those days were mainly smallholding farmers, supplementing their incomes and larders by fishing, catching rabbits and collecting seabird eggs in season.  

The days when a dozen, oar-powered, fishing boats were hauled up the beach at Martin’s Haven are still within living memory.  Many visitors to Skomer and the Marloes Peninsula are likely to remember Kenny Edwards, the National Trust’s car-park attendant for 21 years until the early 1990s.  Ken was always happy to recount tales of fishing from Martin’s Haven with his father in the 1930’s, describing rowing as far as Skokholm, to set and haul strings of a dozen wicker pots by hand.   

Naturally, motorised fishing eventually came to the Skomer area, both powering vessels and pot-haulers.   Although there are no reliable records, effort undoubtedly increased dramatically with the coming of mechanical fishing.  The effect on catches was such that even by the mid-1960s a local Pembrokeshire historian was commenting on the scarcity of lobsters.

For centuries, seals were also exploited around Pembrokeshire; historical accounts describe them being hunted ruthlessly.  Killed for their skins, for oil rendered from their fat and, apparently, also for sport, the sea was described in one record from the early 1700’s as being “red with blood”.

Early interest in the wildlife of Skomer focussed on seabirds and visits from the public were  so well established by the early twentieth century that the island’s owners became concerned about the disturbance they caused and closed the island to visitors – especially photographers - in 1909. Nevertheless, interest in the island’s natural history continued to grow and, following surveys by the West Wales Field Society (now, after several evolutionary and name changes, the Wildlife Trust of South & West Wales) in the mid 1940s, the Island became a National Nature Reserve in 1959.

Although the importance of the island’s offshore position was recognised as critically important to the conservation of seabird populations, the waters between island and the Marloes Peninsula were still a major logistical inconvenience to the island’s wardens.  Also, despite the appreciation of the sea’s importance as the source of food for the island’s nesting birds, the marine environment did not seem to command much respect.  One early island warden even recorded how empty food tins were thrown into North Haven to dispose of them!

But the regular visits to the island by professional conservationists and educators, coupled with the marine biological expertise of the nearby Dale Fort Field Centre led to increased curiosity about the marine wildlife around Skomer, and the effects on it from human pressures.   In the late 1960s, unease developedabout the possible ecological effect of divers collecting large numbers of sea urchins from the area around Martin’s Haven as souvenirs and for the curio trade.   At about the same time, the potentially damaging impact of dredging for scallops with heavy, toothed, dredges become apparent.  First suggestions for a need to protect the marine environment around Skomer surfaced in 1968, but it took until 1971 before a small group of local naturalists and biologists from the Field Studies Council proposed that a marine reserve be established around the island and the adjacent Marloes Peninsula.

Skomer Voluntary Marine Reserve

A steering committee of interested organisations and individuals, chaired by the Nature Conservancy Council (NCC – the UK-wide predecessor of the Countryside Council for Wales and sister conservation agencies in England and Scotland), began work in 1974.  By 1976 the group had evolved into a management committee and had produced a management plan for safeguarding what had by now become the voluntary Skomer Marine Reserve.  In addition to aiming to safeguard subtidal habitats, the plan considered that the reserve should also provide a ‘quiet zone’ around the internationally important seabird breeding colonies of the National Nature Reserve.  

The steering committee initially had difficulty in engaging the South Wales Sea Fisheries Committee, the local fisheries management body, in the discussions and developments.  However, mostly thanks to the efforts of Paul Raggett, a Solva-based Committee member and formerly the National Trust’s first Pembrokeshire Warden, the SWSFC eventually did join the SMR’s management committee.  Nevertheless, it is debatable whether this would have happened if assurances had not been sought and received from the management committee that there was no intention at that time to try and curtail the then current levels of “traditional” pot-fishing as there was no evidence of harm (not that anyone had looked for any evidence of effects).  Although these important caveats were recorded, they appear to have been overlooked by the fishing industry since.

Despite the 1976 management plan, the expansion of the Management Committee to include the SWSFC and representatives from the local authorities and local community, and the production and distribution of a basic information leaflet through the National Trust’s car park attendant in Martin’s Haven, success for the voluntary Reserve was always going to be limited as there was neither staff nor resources for management.

However, the limitations of the voluntary approach were recognised and the provisions for statutory MNRs in the 1981 Wildlife and Countryside Act (WCA) were welcomed by the Reserve’s Management Committee, as was the inclusion of Skomer in the NCC’s list of the first seven proposed MNRs.

Skomer MNR history  1   2   3   4