Excellent Courier Mail Perspectives Article Today

[Moonlighter]

Hi all

The following article was published in today's Courier Mail. The author is
Dr Daryl McPhee, a lecturer in environmental management at the University of Queensland and author of the forthcoming textbook Fisheries Management in Australia. He is also MBAA's lead scientist on our FRDC project and is leading the team that is assessing the impact of the EPA's draft.

Regards

Grant

Moreton Bay Marine Park Rezoning

Moreton Bay is Brisbane’s aquatic playground – a source of fresh local seafood often featured in the dining pages of this paper and the focus for recreational fishing families. It also supports wetlands of international significance and is habitat for dugongs, marine turtles and migratory wading birds.

The EPA has released their draft rezoning plan for the Moreton Bay Marine Park. It affects commercial and recreational fishing through controlling where and how people can fish.

The draft zoning plan proposes to close 15% of the Bay to all fishing, but like many things the devil is in the detail. The actual impacts are much greater than this. The proposed rezoning plan if enacted will significantly impact the average recreational fishing family. Let me give you some of the many examples. As it currently stands, the most popular location for family fishers in small boats, the north-western area of Peel Island will be a no fishing area. Today a child can fish off the Shorncliffe Jetty and other popular fishing spots with two fishing rods. Perhaps using one rod to catch some whiting and maybe another rod hoping to catch that prize flathead. This however would become an offence if the draft zoning plan was enacted because only one fishing line per person would be permissible in many popular locations. Holiday anglers staying at Amity Point would be stopped from the Queensland tradition of catching yabbies for bait.

For commercial fishing and seafood consumers, government’s whether they be State or Commonwealth consistently underestimate the impacts of marine parks. For example, in the 2004 rezoning of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park it was estimated that the economic impact would only be $0.5 million. Currently over $220 million has been paid in compensation and the figure continues to grow. The government has earmarked $14 million dollars for compensation for the Moreton Bay Marine Parl but the true costs both economic and social will be considerably higher. Fresh local prawns, calamari, mud crabs and whiting may soon be off the menu.

All this can be avoided while enhancing rather than compromising conservation outcomes. Commercial, recreational and charter vessel representatives have been working together on the solution to the Moreton Bay Marine Park rezoning that meets the scientific principles identified by the EPA’s Expert Scientific Panel. Funding was obtained from the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation and under the guidance of academics from three Australian Universities including the University of Queensland and Griffith University the group developed the solution. It was put together utilising a risk based assessment approach and a higher degree of scientific rigour than the EPA proposal. This is not an ambit statement. By way of a quick comparison, the EPA proposal contains only a single scientific journal article in its bibliography. The proposal forged by the fishing groups contains 119. In an alarming number of instances, the justification for some of the EPA proposal has simply ignored published scientific information on the distribution of fauna in the Bay, fish nursery habitats and the risks to the various habitats. It is an undergraduate effort at best.

While a healthy bay and a sustainable fishery is something we all desire, we should not be lulled into thinking that the draft zoning plan will deliver this. The zoning plan is impotent against coastal development and water quality impacts in the Bay. Worse, it has the potential to alienate fishing groups who act as the canaries in the cage when it comes to such issues as water quality. It was fishers that initially alerted authorities to outbreaks of the toxic fireweed which is linked to water quality problems.

The zoning plan can also not deliver sustainable fisheries which require use of the full set of management tools administered by the Queensland Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries.

Regardless of what the rezoning outcome, funding for the long term monitoring of the marine park performance is also critical. There needs to make a long term commitment of many millions of dollars of funding the basic research to measure the park’s performance. Failure to do this would see the Moreton Bay Marine Park join the many marine parks around the world as a simple “paper park” that lacks credibility.

[Jeremy]

yeah, I saw it. some good points and good exposure there.

Jeremy

[RayDeR]

G''day!

I just sent the below email to various media outlets and various on air personnel.

Ray De R

G'day!

How good is the EPA?


Here is an extract yesterday's Courier Mail (Perspectives 11/12/07 , p 25), from "Dr Daryl McPhee, a lecturer in environmental management at the University of Queensland and author of the forthcoming textbook Fisheries Management in Australia. He is also MBAA's lead scientist on our FRDC project and is leading the team that is assessing the impact of the EPA's draft."


<snip>


Commercial, recreational and charter vessel representatives have been working together on the solution to the Moreton Bay Marine Park rezoning that meets the scientific principles identified by the EPA’s Expert Scientific Panel.
Funding was obtained from the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation and under the guidance of academics from three Australian Universities including the University of Queensland and Griffith University the group developed the solution.
It was put together utilising a risk based assessment approach and a higher degree of scientific rigour than the EPA proposal. This is not an ambit statement.
By way of a quick comparison, the EPA proposal contains only a single scientific journal article in its bibliography. The proposal forged by the fishing groups contains 119.
In an alarming number of instances, the justification for some of the EPA proposal has simply ignored published scientific information on the distribution of fauna in the Bay, fish nursery habitats and the risks to the various habitats. It is an undergraduate effort at best.

<snip>

One scientific article versus 119 ? Hmmmmm...

We pay for the EPA.

Ray De R

[revs57]

Thanks Grant,

have sent a copy in an email to member for lytton, member for chatsworth and opposition dpi & fisheries minister

cheers

Rhys

[Boblee]

When you blokes up there have your rally you better paint yourselves yellow, love his reference to fishermen being the canaries, will certainly use that one.