No, Where did you read anywhere that your contention is founded? The people actually assocaited with running the park feel 99% of the problems for the reef are non fishing related....Read the reports}...This is the Australian government complaining about itself!...There are twenty reports and studies on the Great Barrier Reef Web site on how run off and land usage are major concerns today and in the future..........Yet no reports or concerns on how fishing is effecting the reef itself ? Because its not........fishing {commercial only} is miles off shore and miles away from the reefs .........the fishing that is being reduced is deep water long lining.....Its not effecting reef fish or the health of the reef at any level...But runoff is! .Only wackos make the remote connection and give it credence! Fishing rules within the GBR even allow aquarium collection over 90% of the park! and sport fishing over 70% of the waters! They know it has no effect and thats why there are so few restrictions. Australia has been rated the worst offender as a nation concerning sewage and run off ...by many world organizations........stemming from record land clearing and land based agriculture...........and they have done little to change this ..............forcing more people to seek employment within these far more destructive industries only further increases the burden on the water.........mkirda":i0o2as83 said:
Australia Plans More Protections For The Great Barrier Reef
- Thread starter John_Brandt
- Start date
Sydney Lifestyle Unsustainable, Report Says
By Michael Perry
December 9, 2003
(Page 1 of 2)
SYDNEY (Reuters) - Sydney, Australia is regularly voted one of the world's best cities to live in, but a new environment report has warned its affluent lifestyle is ecologically unsustainable. The 2003 environment report on the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW) says Sydney residents are wasting millions of gallons of water, demanding ever more electricity and remain car obsessed, increasing greenhouse gas emissions.
"As a society, we need to face up to the reality that our environment and its resources are finite," NSW Environment Minister Bob Debus said in a statement attached to the report.
"If we want to keep our quality of life and leave the environment in a better or even the same state than it is now, we need to heed the wake-up call," said Debus.
Sydney, the state capital, is Australia's most populous city with some four million residents. The ecological footprint needed to sustain each resident has increased by 16 percent in the past five years, said the NSW Environment Protection Agency report.
According to the latest statistics, it takes 7.4 hectares (18 acres) of land to provide the range of goods and services consumed by each resident each year, said the report, received Tuesday.
"Continuing the current path of resource use will have serious environmental and economic consequences for NSW. There is unsustainable use of ground and surface water, energy, soils, native vegetation and fish," said the report.
Continued.....
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle....CCCRBAEOCFEY?type=scienceNews&storyID=3959216
Great Barrier breakthrough
By Phil Dickie
December 4, 2003
Marine explorer and environmentalist Jean-Michel Cousteau has been urging it and the public face of international conservation, David Attenborough, is delighted at how "the Australian people are increasing protection for one of the natural wonders of the world".
The green lobby describes it as a remarkable success, while David Kemp, Australia's low-profile Environment Minister, is being credited for his courage. And up and down the Queensland coast, map reading has suddenly become the most popular pastime.
Yesterday's tabling in federal parliament of new zoning maps of the Great Barrier Reef has created the largest network of protected marine areas in the world. Just more than one-third of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park is scheduled to be declared pink (no-go) or green (no-take) zones, or the marine equivalent of national parks.
Large additional areas are to be off-limits to commercial fishing, while a new yellow zoning - you can fish from a tinny but not from a trawler - introduces one-line, one-hook restrictions on recreational anglers. The area open to virtually any use except oil exploration is to be slashed from more than three-quarters of the park area to just more than one-third.
The increased protection - up from only 4.7 per cent of the reef with marine national park level protection, most of which is in the inaccessible far north - is being heralded internationally as a stunning scientific and political achievement.
While natural history broadcaster Attenborough has hailed the decision, Canadian and other governments are keen to apply the precedents and techniques to protecting their own coasts and fisheries. And Kemp is in the unfamiliar position of having the world's largest conservation group commend him for his "leadership, courage and determination in bringing this plan to fruition".
"It has been a huge battle, but I don't think you can say enough about what this means at the international level," says World Heritage expert Peter Valentine, a member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature's World Commission on Protected Areas. "Most coral reefs around the world are seriously damaged, so this is of enormous importance to their preservation and survival."
It is a far cry from the early days of Queensland's Bjelke-Petersen government, when the Great Barrier Reef was seen as a handy source of lime for adjacent canefields and a promising prospect for oil exploration and drilling. Some of that legacy is only just coming to an end. The areas covered by the new zoning plans include 28 coastal enclaves extending up to 5km out to sea, which had been excluded from the marine park since its inception to forestall possible commonwealth interference with any of Joh Bjelke-Petersen's grandiose coastal development proposals.
The rezoning of the nearly 2000km-long reef - the culmination of 10 years of study and investigation - is also notable as the largest public consultation by a commonwealth authority and, most likely, the largest by any Australian government. Nearly 31,500 submissions were received, more than twice the number during the contentious Sydney second airport tussle.
There is strong international interest in how the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority and Australian scientists handled an immense amount of technical and social information down to the so-called highly confidential revelations of favourite fishing spots in submissions, sorted it through state-of-the-art positioning and mapping technologies and stayed true to the scientific and social objectives of the project.
Among the many spin-offs expected from the project - healthier and more resilient reefs, more fish and happier tourists - scientists also expect a modest but significant export market in their hardware, software and expertise.
University of Queensland ecologist, mathematician and project adviser Hugh Possingham says the Australian experience is "about five years ahead of what they have been just talking about doing" in the Gulf of California in Mexico's Baja California.
Kemp rejects any talk of fundamental compromises in the thousands of changes between the draft and final zonings. "The scientific operating principles haven't been compromised and at the end of the day we have a plan that will be owned by most of the communities up the coast."
The principles required minimum protection levels of 20 per cent for each of 70 reef and non-reef bio-regions. The reserves had to be big enough and sufficiently connected to function ecologically, and the mappers had to minimise the social and economic costs.
"If you pick out sites and ignore economic and social factors, you just get into fights," Possingham says. "And if you go out of your way to avoid fights, you do what we have done on the land, which is to conserve large areas of desert and rocky hills and salt lakes that no one else wants."
World Wide Fund for Nature Great Barrier Reef campaigner Imogen Zethoven says: "We can quibble over individual areas and we do, and we can agree with the scientists who say that 50per cent protection would be better than 30 per cent, but at the end of the day you have to say that what the Government has achieved here is remarkable."
But expect some discontent when the fine detail of the maps percolates through to local communities. The most heat - and some light - will come from what is becoming known as the Battle of Repulse Bay, a large indent in the coast south of the Whitsundays. In the draft plans the significant dugong and fish-breeding area turned green and yellow and was protected from trawling and netting.
However, outspoken Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority critic and National Party member for Dawson De-Anne Kelly weighed in to support commercial fishermen. The final zoning, as expected, lets the trawlers and nets back into much of the bay.
Recreational fisherfolk, tourism operators and some local councillors who neither fish nor run tours are outraged, and Kelly is in the unusual position of being more local target than local hero to a large lump of her electorate.
David Hutchen, who operates Fantasea cruises from Airlie Beach and is the chairman of the Association of Marine Park Tourism Operators, says Kelly's "carry-on to protect a very few people has everyone in this area not involved in commercial fishing aghast. I'll try and make sure it rebounds on her and I'm one of her supporters."
Kelly, for her part, was relying heavily on the defence that it was the marine park authority that made the decisions, not her. "Repulse Bay is getting a large green zone in the middle of it and the zoning on that bay is significantly tighter than it was," she says.
The new mood up the Queensland coast and the new political possibilities for conservation reflect shifting economic realities as much as anything. The tourism industry, a strong advocate of increased protected areas, is telling anyone who will listen of the Productivity Commission findings that tourism employs 47,000 people and is worth $4.2billion, while commercial fishing is a $123million industry employing 641.
The rezoning decisively breaks the pattern where loud lobbies have been able to use the Queensland coast, which includes a string of marginal seats at state and federal levels, as a tool to frighten nervous governments of all political colours and levels away from effective action on reef issues.
Queensland's Labor Government, technically a member of the marine park authority, lent no support to the rezoning project, even going so far as to exclude the authority's consultative brochures from Queensland National Parks offices.
As for the marine park authority, in just a few years it has gone from being an utterly demoralised organisation in danger of disbandment to being just about the most motivated agency in the country. The next task is enforcement of the new barriers. Misbehaving trawler skippers are being hauled into court at unprecedented rates. And there will be no repeats of the situation where a CSIRO team doing green-zone research in the 1990s famously noted it was sharing the waters with up to 50 trawlers fishing illegally.
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0,5744,8055181^28737,00.html
Kalkbreath":2gczgou2 said:
Kalk,
Unlike you, I have read books covering coral reef ecology, so I have some understanding of what happens when you start to eliminate top predators, then start moving down the food chain. If you had read the article this post refers to, they cover the same issue in the first two pages!
Yes, there is no doubt that ground run-off effects near-shore reefs. Hell, I agree with you (as I have now indicated to you repeatedly). But that is not the issue here. You brought up fishing, you've been presented with evidence that shows all the links. Why you change the subject to something we both agree on, and try to use that as an argument for fishing is beyond me. Again, ground run-off is irrelevant to fishing...
Regards.
Mike Kirda
Your making a blanket statement that does not apply in this case.........What evidence is that there are too many fish being removed from the Great Barrier Reef? None ....People are fishing in the lake behind my house.......should we ban fishing in that lake because some where in the world there once was a case of over fishing ........and these people fishing in the lake behind my house MIGHT collect too many fish and cause the whole ecosystem in georgia to crash?...................Sometimes removing some of top level predators is a plus for the reefs.........removing too many is usually a negative........But in this case there is such a little amount of fishing taking place that its silly to focus attention on it.....Its the least fished reef in the world ........I can list many examples of how tourism has harmed the reefs in the Bahamas .........and how it is beginning to effect the GBR........Does this mean your calling for an end to tourism in natural parks? Unlike the wildly over stated effects of fishing in the GBR park....... There is actual evidence of how tourism is effecting the park ..........Do you see any proposals for fifty percent decreases in tourism in the GBR.......? Why not? The idea of giving an award to the Australian Government for banning fishing while not addressing the actual documented threats to their reef ..................is like thanking Kobie Bryant for the ring ........all the while knowing in the back of your mind that He is banging other women six nights a week when your not around.............You might be able to thank him for the ring ..............but I would not be able to .........mkirda":3dn0dhkm said:
Kalkbreath":n73rhmxa said:
More totally unsubstantiated statements Kalk ? Geez, and I had held out some hope that you would actually identify sources of your information.
From the website of Queensland Fisheries with respect to the coral reef fishery on the Great Barrier Reef, the following quote:
"Emerging trends in the fishery’s commercial sector show a significant increase in total commercial catch and effort and a gradual decline in the catch rates of target species. Due to these increases in commercial catch and effort levels, action was needed to ensure the fishery and its key stocks such as coral trout were used sustainably. The new Management Plan deals directly with excess fishing capacity through a catch quota management scheme intended to reduce and cap the commercial harvest at 3061 tonnes down from catches in 2002 of 4500 tonnes. "
http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/fishweb/11379.html
So, Kalk, based on years of monitoring, the Fisheries Dept has decided that fishing at current levels on the Great Barrier Reef is not sustainable. Therefore, reductions are needed and they've chopped the quota by 32%. You honestly think that DPI would make that kind of quota reduction if there was truly no problem?
You continue with the cow patties that fishing has no impact on habitats and communities. Have you looked at ANY of the scientific papers I've cited Kalk ? Or would that be like acknowledging you're bending reality to reflect your opinion.
Blue hula
One:they are talking about off shore deep water fish supplies of the target fish Food fish .............Did you notice that the only threats they did list to the coral reef was runnoff and sewage? They did not even mention fishing.....This is their take on the threats.......Global atmospheric change and inshore water quality deterioration with their associated impacts are regarded as the most important threats to the long-term survival of the Great Barrier Reef ecosystem. This document provides an overview of current issues and information concerning water quality in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area, and provides the necessary context and background to support the Great Barrier Reef Catchment Water Quality Action Plan.{END .. ].............this above text is from the Great Barrier Reef site;http://www.gbrmpa.gov.au/corp_site/key_issues/water_quality/current_issuesThe whole site is covering water quallity issues ..........they make no link between reef health and fishing.....THIS SITE IS THE OFFICIAL SITE OF THE GBR........AND IT CONTAINS MANY REPORTS AND STUDIES THAT CONCLUDE IT IS RUNNOFF AND SEWAGE THAT ARE THE GREATEST THREATS........YOU SHOW ME ONE STUDY THE CONCLUDES FISHING HAS HAD AN IMPACT ON THE REEF.......?
I did. reads it ....where does it state that coral health, algae growth, reef fish populations or Sperm whale sperm counts have been effected by the current fishing pressures? Please quote? Only the populations of those fish that are being fished [Cod, coral trout Mackerel groupers, etc., } are in question ......thats fine I support the idea ..........but reducing catches by 1500 for commercial catches {QUOTE]'Deepwater multiple hook license holders may continue to use multiple hook gear in offshore waters beyond the 200-metre depth contour." Will have no effect on the coral reef itself........because these fish are not coral reefs dwellers....... Limiting the "keep" size of certain sportfishing {within the reef }fish is all well indeed.....recreational take and possession limit for Spanish mackerel will be reduced from ten to three fish per person. This is based on a principle that 90 percent of angler trips will not be affected by the new limit............recreational fishing within the coral reef f is not really even being decreased .....Just the implementation of a few size and standards.....Which I support........In fact the more I read the actual proposal the more I see that the government of Australia not blaming the recreational fishermen for harming t5he reef at all ....{unlike the interpretation of the New Management Plan by the Author of the silly soundbite that started this thread}.........The government of Australia is not unjustly coming down on the fishermen like I thought......in fact they are not blaming fishermen at ALL.............so I take back my attack on them for using the fishermen as a scapegoat..................I did.....where does it state that coral health , algae growth , reef fish populations ......or Sperm whale sperm counts have been effected by the current fishing pressures? Only the populations of those fish that are being fished [Cod, coral trout Mackeral groupers etc. } are in question ......thats fine I support the idea ..........but reducing catches by 1500 for commercial catches {QUOTE]'Deepwater multiple hook licence holders may continue to use multiple hook gear in offshore waters beyond the 200-metre depth contour." Will have no effect on the coral reef itself........because these fish are not coral reefs dwellers....... Limiting the "keep" size of certain sportfishing { within the reef }fish is all well indeed.....recreational take and possession limit for Spanish mackerel will be reduced from ten to three fish per person. This is based on a principle that 90 percent of angler trips will not be affected by the new limit............recreational within the coral reef fishing is not really even being decreased .....Just the implimintation of a few size and standaerds.....Which I support........In fact the more I read the actual proposal the more I see that the government of Australisa is not blaming the recreational fishermen at all ....{unlike the interpretation of the new management plan by the Authur of the soundbite that started this thread}The governement of AAustralia is not unjustly comming down on the fishermen like I thought......in fact they are not blaming fishermen for any of the reef decline.....so I take back my attack on them for using the fishermen as a scapegoat..................
Kalkbreath":1sarpag4 said:
The point of this reference was to show you that fishing has actually had an impact on fish populations (they are declining) despite your statements that fishing has no effect on fish populations. Then, given that populations of target predator fish have been reduced by fishing and given that trophic cascades exist (i.e. you can't impact one component of the ecosystem without having downstream effects, particularly when it is key species such as top predators - please refer to my previous set of citations indicating the general presence of trophic cascades) ... other species will be affected.
Kalkbreath":1sarpag4 said:
Your quotation from the website is out of context. Have a look at the actual legislation / management plan. The vast majority of the species managed under this plan ARE coral reef fish. The deep water, multiple hook gear is only one component of the entire fishery which includes an extensive commercial fishery ON THE REEF.
Kalkbreath":1sarpag4 said:
Where the hell did you get this fron ... that 90% of trips are unaffected?
Gee - guess you're not an Australian fisherman as they have been fairly upset about the "implementation of a few size and standards" - the seasonal CLOSURES 2 weeks for each of 3 months had people pretty cranky.
Kalkbreath":1sarpag4 said:
In reference to management of fish populations, you're right Kalk, the Government of Australia is only saying that fisherman have overexploited target species such that current levels of exploitation are unsustainable. They are simply holding them responsible for overfishing.
The links between overfishing and loss of reef health have been made elsewhere, including in Australia and I direct you to the previous set of references I provided YET AGAIN.
Blue hula
Kalkbreath":1r2enf3f said:
If you had pulled the papers Blue Hula pointed you to, then actually read them, there would be no way you could actually ask this question.
It is all there for you to see if only you would open your eyes and perceive it.
It is "the refusal to think - not blindness, but the refusal to see; not ignorance, but the refusal to know."
Regards.
Mike Kirda
I did pull the papers ......the statement; "This is based on a principle that 90 percent of angler trips will not be affected by the new limit...". IS FROM THE WEBSITE!!! The actual and official fisheries report for the decade 1989 to2000.........does not even show a decrease in fish collections ........ .http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/extra/pdf/fis ... 9......883 tons........1994.....889......2000...1406.....!! this is hardly a decline in fish catches.......If you look at the totals year by year is seems itsd been quite sustainable.....even the "coral trout" has seen"the mean daily harvest per boat declined by about 40% in 1997 and then increase from 1998 to 2000?......,Looks like the fishing actually increases the fish population based on that statistic? Or is it that we are removing such an insignificant number of fish , that the natural fluctuations in fish densities overrides and effects our tiny collections play....?
I think there is a lot you have missed, Its within the pdf down loads............I dont know how to copy and paste in Acrobat.....? You might know how? Down load the recreational fishing section .....http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/fishweb/9014.html out from the pdf files .........There is a lot of interesting stuff in there .......The most eye opening is that there really is no data showing fishing stocks declining..........only that they the Government are/is concerned that in the future there might be ........down the road..........Which I have no problem with ........... Its the distortion by outside groups {meadia}of how new fishing restrictions are going to effect and help current coral reef stresses.....and distracting every one from the real issues 8O
Kalkbreath":3ao8a8hq said:
Kalk, what the website actually said was that:
"Where the information was available, possession limits have been set at a point where 90% of angler trips have caught less than, or equal to, the possession limits specified without participants on those trips having to forego catches. " http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/fishweb/13525.html
What this means that, in light of concerns about declining coral reef fish populations, the Department has lowered possession limits. But they have only lowered them to a point that the top 10% of angler trips are being affected ... so they are effectively saying that for the majority of fishers (who aren't that skilled and don't catch that many fish) ... you can go on being unskilled and catching a few fish ... but those of you that are highly skilled such that you are catching lots, we're going to restrict you. This is done in recognition that most fish are caught by a few good fishers and that there are limits on how low you can take the limits without causing outrage. In light of conservation concerns, they will slowly slowly keep reducing the catch levels. No where does it say they are not concerned about recreational fishing.
Kalkbreath":3ao8a8hq said:
The link you posted takes you to the overview of inshore fishery which does NOT include coral reef fish (try mud crab, mackeral and barramundi from estuaries and inshore (non reef) waters).
I did however manage to find the overview of coral trout and red throat emperor - 2 key species caught in the coral reef line fishery and to which the new restrictions apply. http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/extra/pdf/fis ... ct_rte.pdf
No where on this pdf was I able to find the landings you have cited (e.g. 2000 landings of 1406 tons). I did however find data for coral trout:
it shows a decline in catch per unit effort from a high of 4.26 tonnes per boat in 1992 to 2.78 tonnes per boat in 2000, having increased (slightly) from an all time low of 2.32 tonnes per boat in 1997. This is despite an increase in total catch from 1475 tonnes in 1992 to 1538 tonnes in 2000.
and for red throat emperor:
it shows a decline in catch per unit effort from 1.7 tonnes per boat in 1994 to 1.27 tonnes per boat in 2000. This is despite an increase in catch from 560 tonnes in 1994 to 637 tonnes in 2000.
These are declines on the order of about 40% in catch per unit effort despite the fact that total catch has increased. And the slight increase in coral trout catch per unit effort does hardly a recovery make (nor do the scientists involved suggest that it is).
Quick lesson in fisheries research Kalk
To get a rough idea of how the stock is doing, fisheries scientists look at catch per unit effort (how many fish per boat) because if you look at only catch (which is what you cited), it may simply mean that fishers are spending more time fishing as opposed to there being more fish around.
Indeed, the conclusion is that there are fewer around. So the stats you are quoting alone, are useless.
Because catch per unit effort only gives you an indirect indication of what is going on with a fish population, researchers also do underwater visual surveys. The surveys done by the Australian Institute of Marine Science over 15 years show declines in the abundance of coral trout on reference reefs being monitored.
Looks like fishing affects fish...
Relevance to the ornamental trade ? the Global Marine Aquarium Database gang produced a document on the aquarium trade (discussed on an earlier thread and available at:
(http://www.unep.org/PDF/From_Ocean_To_A ... report.pdf)
The document concludes that the trade is sustainable because the scale of exports / imports has remained steady. This is effectively like considering only catch (like you did) - and disregards the fact that exporters are getting fish from further and further away to maintain supply ... because local populations have been overexploited.
Cheers, Blue hula
Kalkbreath":34i2g7fb said:
Ya know, I thought I could leave it alone but this is like a zit you can't keep from picking.
It would help to "not miss things" if you actually provided the correct links and even talked about the correct fishery (inshore does not equal coral reef). There is indeed a lot of information out there and it is hard to wade through it all - particularly in light of the fact that you are constantly changing topic (the recent seguay into 1000 year old corals and redwoods for instance). Although I am familiar with the issues you are raising, to actually make sure that I have SUPPORT AND EVIDENCE for my responses, I go and look for it / recheck / find the link / pull the research paper. This takes a lot of time and yes, I do have a day job. Again, it would help us all understand and consider your points if you provided trackable sources (particularly given your propensity to mis- and selectively quote). Perhaps then I wouldn't "miss so much".
Kalkbreath":34i2g7fb said:
Gee - you call 15 years of monitoring total landings, effort AND doing underwater visual surveys (resource assessments) "no data" (see previous posts links)
That's for the commercial fishery.
Recreational fishing is always more difficult as it is hard to assess total effort. But even there, they have done creel surveys.
What kind of data do you require?
Blue hula
The data is contained in the inshore overview section under northern fisheries {which covers the GBR......in it you wil notice that overall Total { for all species} harvest has increased since 1989.....even though the total boats have only increased about 15 percent. A decrease in per boat catches of trout can be that the boat targeted other types of fish instead.and that demand for certain types of fish in 1989 fish may have changed and focused on other species {like shark} ..... Furthermore nowhere does report suggest that fish populations of any species other then the few targeted species are being effected by the fishing industry or that the current threats to the health of the coral and reef iteself will benifit from slight decreases in fishing pressure........The report does bring about the fact that the 1997 typhoon decreased the number of fish in the area and despite this natural depletion of fish stocks ......the fish populations rebounded and then recorded record total fish catches in 2000.....giving credence to the notion that water quality and environment play a far greater role in maintaining reef heath and fish stocks then do the removal a limited number of fish for food or pets. :wink:
Kalkbreath":38as12jr said:
What this suggests is that the GBR management authority:
1) Conducts resource assessments.
2) Makes policy decisions based on them.
3) Has the will and authority to implement the policy without bowing too much to the political pressures from the fishing lobby.
You seem to believe, Kalk, that in the fisheries model that you use in your head you can assign weight to variables in the equation arbitrarily. For instance, water quality is 90% important while fishing pressures are 10% important. Your use of the terms "far greater role" suggests this belief.
And yet, there is no evidence provided anywhere that suggests that this weighting is correct, nor that it might be 50:50 or 60:40 or 70:30 or 80:20.
Personally, I would posit that the weighting would be higher on the water quality side than the fishing pressure side but would have add in a third variable, that being grazing pressure. Without grazing pressure, all reefs would have been reduced to fleshy algal ridges a long time ago. And guess what? Fishing pressure affects grazing pressure more than water quality. The lack of this variable in your model is why you don't see the point that Blue Hula and I have been making. You can increase nutrient runoff and have no visible affect on the reef because grazing pressures can increase, assuming fishing pressures are level. The moment you increase nutrients, then increase fishing pressure, grazing pressure falls and you have an algal bloom. It is that simple. Fishing pressure has more of an effect on grazing pressure than water quality would.
Regards.
Mike Kirda
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