Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps his Department is taking to help protect UK marine wildlife from the increase in ocean temperatures.

In the UK we are committed to ensuring that climate change adaptation, resilience and mitigation are fully considered in our marine and fisheries policies, and work is underway to prepare for the Third National Adaptation Programme, due to be published in 2023.

Through our UK Marine Strategy, we have put in place a legal framework for assessing and monitoring the status of our seas, and implementing the measures needed for UK waters to achieve Good Environmental Status (GES). We have consulted on a programme of measures proposed for inclusion in Part 3 of the Strategy, which include measures supporting the increased resilience of the marine environment/species to climate change impacts.

We are also working with those countries we share our seas with through OSPAR, the regional seas convention for the North-East Atlantic, to implement its strategy to 2030, which includes developing coordinated management approaches to strengthening ecosystem resilience, including to the consequences of climate change.

Ocean action should be underpinned by transformational ocean science, and the UK is a hub of world class ocean and climate scientific expertise. We continue to develop and invest in our world-leading science, including though partnerships like the Marine Climate Change Impacts Partnership, to champion ocean climate research across key areas such as blue carbon, nature-based solutions, ocean acidification and global monitoring systems.