Anchoring & Mooring
With Care
WHAT IS THE ISSUE?
Anchoring is an essential part of boating, whether you are stopping for lunch or sheltering from stormy conditions. It is important for recreational boaters to be aware of protected seabed habitats around the coastline and ensure best practice is adopted to help minimise any impacts anchoring activities and mooring systems can have on these sensitive habitats.
Between 2019 and 2024, the RYA and The Green Blue, along with other organisations, partnered with Natural England as part of an EU LIFE funded project known as LIFE Recreation ReMEDIES Project #SaveOurSeabed. As part of this project and since, RYA Green Blue has been helping to raise awareness of the importance of seabed habitats and the best practice recreational boating can adopt to help protect and restore these habitats.
Why protect seabed habitats?
Intertidal and subtidal sandbanks and mudflats of European importance are habitats to a number of protected species such as seahorses, stalked jellyfish and rare seaweeds. Seagrass is a key seabed habitats most at risk from recreational boating disturbance through anchoring and mooring systems that can damage and abrade this habitat.
Why Protect Seagrass?
- Seagrass covers 0.1 – 0.2% of the seabed globally and is one of the most rapidly declining habitats on earth and scarce in UK seas
- Provide important nursery grounds for fish, including at least 9 commercially important species e.g. Plaice, Pollock and Herring.
- Healthy seagrass beds store 10 – 15% of global carbon, helping to keep significant amounts of carbon from the atmosphere which would otherwise contribute towards climate change.
- Seagrass helps anchor and stabilise sediment playing an important role is buffering coastlines from storms.
What Can You Do to Help?
Download The Green Guide to Anchoring & Moorings.
Locate Seagrass areas before choosing an anchorage. If you are planning a boating trip why not find out where protected seagrass is located to better inform you of where you can avoid anchoring and be extra vigilant.
Below are links to online maps of Seagrass locations across the UK:
