Dogger Bank
The Dogger Bank is a 25,000 km2 offshore submerged sandbank in the middle of the North Sea, designated as an EU Natura 2000 marine protected area. Despite its severely degraded state, the Dogger Bank is also called a breeding ground of the North Sea. It forms the heart of a network of marine protected areas needed and required to restore the North Sea ecosystem.
Divided into a British, Dutch, German and Danish part, the Dogger Bank is the scenery of many international political and economic interests in shipping, fisheries and energy. The construction of the world’s largest wind farm is just one of the master plans threatening this area. In addition, noise pollution and bottom-fishing are disturbing marine life on a daily basis. These are the many consequences of the extractive attitude towards the sea, which is too often seen as an unlimited resource available to humans instead of a living entity belonging to itself.
Doggerland, breeding ground of the North Sea
Despite rules and regulations that seem adequate on paper, in the ‘watery reality’, the Dogger Bank ecosystem is deteriorating. Critical and independent voices are hardly heard at the negotiation table; nature organisations are under pressure to operate within the agreements of the government and market parties. This discrepancy between the technocratic system and the living world is the reason for the Embassy of the North Sea and Doggerland Foundation (Thomas Rammelt and Emilie Reuchlin) to join forces in a three-year cross-disciplinary programme aimed at protecting and restoring the Dogger Bank seascape. The programme consists of four pillars: legal enforcement, ecology & restoration, interdisciplinary research & design and social impact.
