Hi Joakim

The earlier MBAA proposal in our first response to EPA re Coombabah was based on what we genuinely believed EPA's original "area of interest" was for the Coombabah area.

At that time, you'll recall that EPA refused to give us, or anyone else for that matter, a map of their "Areas of Interest" and although we eventually got some GPS coordinates for some of the AOI's off them, they didn't include Coombabah Ck. So all we could go on was a brief meeting where we had to scribble down rough notes and sketches on what we could see on a very broad scale map that they showed us and wouldn't let us take copies of. We're still not sure what their original AOI for Coombabah was!

The result was that in the first stage of our report we felt we basically had little choice but to go with with what we honestly believed they had proposed because there were few alternative areas with similar habitat types available, which was down to the bridge. Between a rock and a hard place, as they say! So it was not our trade-off, it was simply the best response we could make to EPA's proposals at the time.

However when the draft was released and it became apparent that they were now seeking a fairly small extension, we revisited the issue and our sub is very clear that we support only the existing long-term fisheries closure area to be turned green.

Regards

Grant