Many visitors to the South Coast will be familiar with Studland Bay, just outside Poole Harbour. It's a stop over for many travelling between the Solent and Weymouth/Portland. This sandy bay is well sheltered from southwest winds. It is ideal for lift keel yachts as you can go right up close to shore and walk around your boat to perform an inspection. This area has been declared a marine conservation zone. Through online forums I've been following the progress of this marine conservation zone as analysis and proposals evolve. If you haven't yet looked into it then you might want to take an interest from now on. There is much dispute about a possible connection between boats anchoring and the population of seahorses and seagrass.

The Dorset Coast Forum held an online public forum on 25th March. It was a lively event. Although no decision has yet been taken on which option to back, two of the three proposals would remove a large chunk, if not all, of this anchorage. This is really hard to comprehend for an anchorage used and appreciated by so many. Any anchoring would be pushed partially or entirely to the bay to the north where there is much less shelter from the wind.

I captured the main slides presented during the meeting and also the very many comments and questions. If you have an interest, take a look at the attached file to get a sense of what is going on and how many feel about it.   Studland Bay anchorage conservation consultation.pdf (2,648kb) downloaded 21 time(s).

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The Dorset Coast Forum has made its presentation on the future of Studland Bay available. In the next week or so they will post answers to the two hundred or so questions that were posed during the recent online consolutation meeting.

https://www.dorsetcoasth...y.co.uk/studland-bay-mcz 

Their most recent letter:

Thank you to everyone who attended or registered to attend the Studland Bay MCZ public engagement online event last Thursday 25th March.

https://www.dorsetcoasth...y.co.uk/studland-bay-mcz 

A transcript of the Q&A session for the questions that were answered live will be shared on the same website next week.

As explained during the presentations the purpose of this information sharing event was to summarise what has happened so far, outline proposed management measures, give feedback from the recent stakeholder meeting and provide an opportunity to ask questions. In addition to the 30 minute question and answer session at the event, we had over 200 questions and comments received so we are now processing all the questions and polling votes taken at the event. They will be summarised in a report after further engagement is completed.

The MMO are reviewing all the feedback received and the Dorset Coast Forum will be in touch with further details about the next steps. There will be further opportunity for you to have your say on the MCZ management measures for Studland Bay.

Thank you again for taking the time to share your views so far.

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