Marine Monitoring Coordination Group (MMCG)

The Marine Monitoring Coordination Group (MMCG) is a Defra led group originally set up to support the work highlighted through the government's first report on marine stewardship, Safeguarding Our Seas (May 2002).

This 'Safeguarding our Seas' report highlighted the need for finding ways to:

optimise the way UK marine monitoring meets current and emergent national and international legal requirements and obligations, including those under the EU Water Framework and EC Habitat Directives, OSPAR (Biodiversity Strategy), Global Ocean Observing Systems (GOOS) and EU Fisheries Regulations;
promote the closer integration of our marine environmental monitoring framework and the co-ordination of sector-orientated monitoring (i.e. Marine Processes and Climate, Marine Environmental Quality, Marine Habitats and Species and Marine Fisheries) and;
encourage a collaborative and co-ordinated approach to data gathering, and the interchange of data, between sectorally-based monitoring programmes.

To meet some of these aims the MMCG provided assistance on the production of the Defra Charting Progress report released in March 2005 through producing four reports based on sector-orientated monitoring (i.e. Marine Processes and Climate, Marine Environmental Quality, Marine Habitats and Species and Marine Fisheries). JNCC co-ordinated the overall production of the sector report on Marine Habitats and Species, ( PDF, 9.7mb).

The Charting Progress report has highlighted a number of gaps both in our knowledge and understanding of the marine environment, and the way we gather and coordinate this information. The MMCG is progressing work to redesign the collection, coordination and reporting of marine data. This is being carried out overall through the Marine Data Information Partnership (MDIP).

JNCC continues to represent the Marine Habitats and Species sector and provide advice on biodiversity to the MMCG.