It has recently been announced that the Marine Environment Protection Fund (MEPF), a component of the Aggregate Levy Sustainability Fund (ALSF), has been allocated a further £2.5M in support of research for the FY2007/8.

It is proposed that a significant proportion of the fund will be spent undertaking data acquisition programmes capable of producing information suitable for environmental characterisation of two regions associated with marine aggregate extraction - the Thames Estuary and the South Coast.

The ALSF-MEPF website (www.alsf-mepf.org.uk) explains that; 'These projects are expected to complement the industry-led REA process by providing a broader regional environmental context against which sub-regional significance can be robustly considered, and will involve the collection and interpretation of data to describe the seabed features, habitats, and species and features, including items of heritage interest, that exist at a regional scale centred on current marine aggregate licensed interests.'

MarineSpace assisted the MEPF Steering Group by producing the draft project specification document and survey plans suitable for issue to prospective survey contractors. MarineSpace liaised with a number of organisations during development of the proposals to ensure that the survey plans were realistic in scale and capable of producing high quality, fit-for-purpose, data. Visit the ALSF-MEPF website for more details and to view the regional survey specification documents.