The UK's sealife will be protected by 31 new conservation zones aimed at preventing trawling and dredging destroying life on the ocean floor, under plans announced by the government on Thursday. But ministers rejected advice to create 127 zones, including all the areas where no activity would have been allowed, leading campaigners to describe the plan as "pitiful" and a "bitter disappointment".

"The UK has one of the world's richest marine environments, and we need to make sure it stays that way," said environment minister Richard Benyon. "We have to get this right. Designating the right sites in the right places, so that our seas are sustainable, productive and healthy, and to ensure that the right balance is struck between conservation and industry."

To celebrate the launch of the new spectrophotometers; DR 3900 and DR 6000, instrumentation specialist HACH LANGE launched a competition to find the oldest operational HACH or LANGE photometer in Ireland. Extensive research revealed that the contestant with the oldest instrument, and winner of a brand new DR 3900, is Michael Whelan of Wicklow County Council with his DR3 spectrophotometer purchased in 1985.

Mr Whelan previously used the DR3 at a water treatment plant for testing colour, turbidity, pH, residual aluminium, and residual fluoride. Mr Whelan said, “Amazingly, we have only ever had to replace the bulb, such is the quality of the Hach instruments. I am looking forward to using the DR3900 with barcode identification because water quality testing will be easier and quicker.”

As the regulatory requirement to assess reservoirs and lakes expands to include smaller bodies of water, HR Wallingford has developed a remote control boat which is able to collect hydrometric data quickly, simply, safely and accurately.

The ARC-Boat employs a sophisticated SonTek (a Xylem company) M9 Acoustic Doppler Profiler (ADP®) which is a 5-beam depth sounding device that scans the reservoir bed as the boat is guided across the water’s surface. Recorded data are analysed by SonTek Hydrosurveyor software to produce accurate depth measurement in addition to 3-D maps of the entire water body. With a small amount of post-processing in GIS or 3D CAD, an accurate water volume can be determined.

The growing popularity of DIY, encouraged by an "explosion" in daytime TV programmes on property, is leading to raw sewage being increasingly pumped into Britain's rivers, killing wildlife.

Botched plumbing jobs mean that foul water that should be piped into the sewage system is being fed into ground and coastal waters. According to the Marine Conservation Society, the growing problem is causing the degradation of the country's smaller rivers and threatening invertebrate ecosystems and depleting fish stocks, including salmon, trout, perch and pike.

Thames Water alone believes that in its region – serving 14 million customers in London and the Thames Valley – one in every 10 homes now have misconnected drains.