In this month’s Manx Wildlife Trust column, Peter Duncan takes a look at the Manx Marine Nature Reserve of Baie ny Carrickey (Carrick Bay). The Baie ny Carrickey (or Carrick Bay) Marine Nature Reserve is centred in Port St Mary in the island’s south, and has a total area of 11.4 km2.
The history of the area as a marine protected area actually dates back to around 2012, when the bay was closed to mobile fishing gear (trawls and dredges) as a mechanism to reduce fishing gear conflict between dredges and creels. The perception was that the heavy, towed gears used for scallop fishing were damaging both the rocky reef habitats and also the valuable lobsters that lived among them. The solution was to separate the two types of fishing on either side of the boundary, a successful situation that still exists today.
Subsequently, when the designation of marine nature reserves was being considered, the wide range of important species and habitats within the area, and that bottom-towed gears were already excluded, meant that it was an obvious candidate. Baie ny Carrickey is characterised by the local, rocky geology, and three hard-rock habitats that highlight the reserve’s diversity are the sea stack, known as the Sugarloaf, the fossil-bearing limestone of Port St Mary ledges, and the rocky seabeds that support the dense kelp forests of the bay itself. The Sugarloaf is a seastack on the eastern side of Baie Stacka and is one of the most important seabird nest sites on the island, a.