I was not aware of that—I am now—and what a great idea for countries to work together in that way.
When we were taking the Bill that became the 2009 Act through Parliament, I was really quite surprised to discover how little we appeared to know about what was on the seabed surrounding these islands. Some very intrepid divers, some of whom I met, went down and took photographs. If the photos were shown to me or to anybody else and the question was asked, “Where was that picture taken?”, most people would say, “Is that the Great Barrier Reef?” No—it was under the murky waters of the North sea.
One thing we know about nature is that although we have been destroying it at a rate of knots, if we give it the chance, it can recover with astonishing speed. The North sea was originally covered abundantly in oyster beds, coarse peat banks and rock deposited by glaciers, and it was home to a rich community of marine species. A lot of that was sadly destroyed by bottom-trawl fisheries over the past century and it is now a relatively poor community of species.
Let me say a word on bottom trawling. It is an incredibly destructive practice, but it is unseen because it takes place beneath the waves. To make a slightly
absurd analogy, let us imagine that to collect apples, someone decided to drag a net across the countryside taking with it all the hedges, tree saplings, bird nests and the trees on which the apples hang just for the purpose of collecting the apples in the process. People would be outraged and appalled, but that is what we have been doing on the surface of the seabed for a long time and no one sees it happening. It is about bearing witness to what is going on. The right hon. Member for Epsom and Ewell (Chris Grayling), who is not in his place, talked about the deforestation of the Amazon. The thing about technology is that, with satellites, we can see how the rainforest is reducing over time. It is really important that we use all those means to bear witness to what is taking place in order to motivate change.
We find the recovery of nature in some surprising places. There has been a lot of debate about the impact of wind farms on birds, but research has shown that, in effect, wind farms act as artificial reefs. They can host a very wide range of marine species once nature has had a chance to recover.
My final point is about the contribution that nature makes to our health and wellbeing.