The bill will include new provisions for protecting ecologically important areas, regulating inshore fisheries and designating areas for industry.

Environmental groups, reports BBC News, say the seas are "in crisis" and need tougher protection than the government is likely to give.

There are special concerns over oil and gas exploration around the coast.

"The need to safeguard our seas has never been stronger," said Simon Walmsley, head of marine issues with the conservation group WWF UK.

"The Marine Bill offers the government a real opportunity to plan and manage our seas strategically and sustainably."

The draft bill was supposed to have materialised in an earlier parliamentary session, having been promised in the 2005 Queen's Speech.

It may also include measures to improve public access to the coastline.

Conservation organisations, which have lobbied the government heavily over the last few years and consulted regularly with ministers, say they welcome the fact that the bill is finally here, but fear it will not bring important ecological protection as extensively or as quickly as they would wish.

There is broad agreement in the conservation community that the bill needs to deliver three things:

* Thorough protection, including bans on fishing, for ecologically important areas such as those where fish spawn and develop;

* A planning system that sensibly allocates areas of sea to various uses such as wind farms, shipping or tourism; and

* Effective management and enforcement of the rules, possibly by a new Marine Agency.

Currently UK waters have just three highly protected marine reserves, at Strangford Lough in Northern Ireland, Skomer in Pembrokeshire, and Lundy Island off the North Devon coast.

"We are calling for a commitment to designate between 20% and 40% of our seas as marine reserves," said Melissa Moore, senior policy officer with the Marine Conservation Society (MCS).

MCS and its fellows are likely to be disappointed on this issue.

Previous government publications suggest it intends to protect less than 20%, and some of that is likely to consist of partially-protected "marine conservation zones" rather than full reserves.

Details of where the proposed zones are, and what protection they will have, are likely to remain unclear for several more weeks until the government produces a set of policy papers.

It is also unclear who will decide which areas to protect.

Conservation groups say power should lie with the state's agencies such as Natural England and its equivalents in the devolved administrations, though that appears unlikely.

www.fishupdate.com is published by Special Publications. Special Publications also publish FISHupdate magazine, Fish Farmer, the Fish Industry Yearbook, the Scottish Seafood Processors Federation Diary, the Fish Farmer Handbook and a range of wallplanners.

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