WeFish

What have we achieved in the Coral sea, what is it that we have protected from what?

Pew's Coral Sea Campaign director Imogen Zethoven 30th Sep 2009

What do mean by "fully protected"?

"No fishing, no oil and gas exploration - extractive activities would be prohibited. But of course COMMERCIAL SHIPPING would be permitted as well as tourism, yachting, and NAVAL ACTIVITIES. "


Cairns and Far North Environment Centre marine campaigner Steve Ryan said

"A lot of these areas are beyond the continental shelf so most people don’t visit these remote reef system"

Pew's Coral Sea Campaign director Imogen Zethoven 30th Sep 2009

“In the Coral Sea there is actually VERY LITTLE recreational fishing and what we're finding is that the level of pushback (by Australian anglers) is disproportionate to the actual level of fishing that occurs there”

“And in fact when fishermen realise that the area we are proposing is very far offshore and they NEVER GO THERE then it's not an issue for them. So we are talking about a very SMALL impact and a very large community benefit that would last forever.”

Professors Terry Hughes, director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies
February 25, 2012

“At the moment there's almost no recreational fishing taking place within the Coral Sea, so we think it's not a good idea to encourage the development of widespread recreational fishing that's based on catch and release technologies.”

So they all agree that fishing in the Coral Sea is a very minor activity, and a scientist claiming to want to stop tag and release fishing, tag and release fishing is a scientific recognised method in gaining valuable information on marine species, most of what we know today about the marine species is only available to us because of catch and release fishing, be it from recreational anglers or specific scientific research, what does Professors Terry Hughes, suggest that we lock up the area and forget about it like we have done in Victoria?
What are the threats to the area?
Recently we have had 2 ships with engine troubles, that if not for pure luck would have run aground on this precious area, vessels MV Vega Fynen on the 26th October 2011 and ID Integrity on 20th May 2011, have we all forgotten how close we came last April when the Shen Neng ran aground on the GBR causing widespread damage to the reef.

http://asopa.typepad.com/asopa_people/2011/10/hmas-broome-averts-maritime-disaster-in-coral-sea.html

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-05-19/stricken-ship-narrowly-misses-reef/4021460

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2010-04-13/reef-damage-from-carrier-stretches-3km/393854


Then we have the advocates poster child the whale.

( Frantzis 1998; Jepson et al. 2003). The International Whaling Commission’s Scientific Committee noted “there is now compelling evidence implicating military sonar as a direct impact on beaked whales in particular”(IWC 2004). Even a U.S. Navy-commissioned report stated that “the evidence of sonar causation [of whale beachings] is, in our opinion, completely convincing.” (Levine et al. 2004) Often whales show bleeding around their brain, in their ears, in other structures to do with hearing, and in other organs of their body (e.g. NOAA and U.S. Navy 2001; Fernandez et al. 2005). Mass strandings of certain types of whale increased dramatically after 1961 when more powerful naval sonars began to be used (Friedman 1989).

One scientist reported that 1/3 of all stranded cetaceans they necropsies had some form of auditory damage

Research shows that whales avoid sounds with a source level of about 120 dB (Richardson et al., 1995, Green et al., 1998) There are sound sources in the ocean that produce noise levels much higher than 120 dB:

1) Air guns used for oil exploration & geophysical research (216-230 dB)
2) Underwater construction
3) Explosives
4) Military sonars
5) Large ships
6) Acoustic harassment devices

These very loud underwater sounds may cause various adverse effects on marine mammals including:

1) Masking social communications used to find mates or identify predators
2) Temporary and permanent hearing loss or impairment
3) Displacement from preferred habitat
4) Disruption of feeding, breeding, nursing and communication
5) Stranding’s
6) Death and serious injury from haemorrhaging and tissue trauma

Public and scientific concern about underwater noise pollution has grown over the last decade after a series of mass mortalities of cetaceans associated with the use of mid-frequency active sonar in coastal areas.

The British Defence Research Agency reports that fish exposed to Low Frequency Active Sonar above 160 dB suffered:

1) Internal injuries
2) Eye haemorrhaging
3) Auditory damage
4) Fifty-seven precent of brown trout died after exposure to levels above 170 dB.
Here is what the WWF has to say on shipping and whales.
“Ship strikes are to blame for 90% of North Atlantic right whale deaths for which the cause is known (excluding deaths from natural causes such as old age). However, they are only one of the whale species directly threatened by shipping”

Recreational fishing not only doesn’t target Whales but doesn’t target its food source either. One species that recreational anglers do target is the Black Marlin, With the help of recreational anglers, scientist have confirmed with DNA testing that the Black Marlin the spawn in the Coral Sea are a separate group to the Black marlin of other areas, so the claim that Black Marlin numbers are declining globally is irrelevant, our Black Marlin don’t breed with other Black Marlin from areas like the Indian Ocean or South China Sea.

"Between October and December, game boats criss‐cross the reef front in hope of hooking a giant black marlin. These can reach 700 kg in weight and achieve speeds near 130 km/h, making them one of the ocean's most prized game fish. Although the game boats have killed many black marlins in the past, today’s recreational fishing ethics result in the release of the vast majority of the fish they catch. In fact, the scientists took advantage of this catch‐and‐release practice to assist their research."

“The habitat inside the GBR may hold the key. Juvenile black marlin can be found inside the GBR lagoon year round, indicating that it is a prime nursery area,” the researchers say.

“The lagoon likely has just the right combination of water temperature and prey availability to optimize the survival of the young marlin. Marlin are voracious predators right from hatching, and the ample supply of spawning coral reef fishes provides a rich diet of tiny fish for the marlin to eat,” Dr Domeier adds.

http://www.protectourcoralsea.org.au/media/transfer/doc/mcsi_marlin_gbr_13mar12.pdf


"Intense wet-season rainfall in January 2005 caused rivers in the Mackay–Whitsunday region of Queensland, Australia, to produce large discharges to the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) lagoon. The regional land use is dominated by sugarcane cultivation, beef grazing and urban uses. The high nutrient (nitrogen and phosphorus) fluxes from these land uses via river runoff produced a massive phytoplankton bloom in the GBR lagoon, which, after 9 days, had spread 150 km offshore."

"In high flow events, most of the rivers of north-eastern Queensland flow fresh to the mouth and estuarine processes take place on the continental shelf rather than in a traditional estuary (Devlin and Brodie 2005)"

http://www-public.jcu.edu.au/public/groups/everyone/documents/journal_article/jcuprd1_059685.pdf

The PEWs submission to the Coral Sea as well as all the Australian environmental NGOs submissions not ONE of them mentioned any other threat besides fishing and oil and gas exploration, not one of them even hinted at these other major threats to the area, yet they are up in arms at the port expansion in QLD, claiming that the increased shipping will threaten the area. This entire Coral Sea campaign has been nothing but an elaborate anti-fishing campaign and your government has participated in attacking Australian anglers.

 

NGO submissions

 

PEW http://www.environment.gov.au/coasts/mbp/coralsea/consultation/submissions/pubs/0370pewenvironmentgroup.pdf

ACF  http://www.environment.gov.au/coasts/mbp/coralsea/consultation/submissions/pubs/0140australianconservationfoundation.pdf

AMCS www.environment.gov.au/coasts/mbp/coralsea/consultation/submissions/pubs/0196australianmarineconservationsociety01.doc

CAFNEC http://www.environment.gov.au/coasts/mbp/coralsea/consultation/submissions/pubs/0338cairnsandfarnorthenvironmentcentre.pdf

Humane Society International  http://www.environment.gov.au/coasts/mbp/coralsea/consultation/submissions/pubs/0141humanesocietyinternational.pdf

Some dive groups 

 

PADI  http://www.environment.gov.au/coasts/mbp/coralsea/consultation/submissions/pubs/0346professionalassociationofdivinginstructors.pdf

Mike Ball Dive Expeditions  http://www.environment.gov.au/coasts/mbp/coralsea/consultation/submissions/pubs/0364mikeballdiveexpeditions01.pdf

Just one example of many of the dive groups using a chained wheelie bin filled with tuna carcases to attract sharks, this practise is banned almost everywhere else in the world, as it has been shown to modify shark behaviour and introduce a unusual large amount of predators to the area.