Recently, members of the fishing industry staged a protest about Australia’s new network of marine parks. But when Environment Minister Tony Burke announced the parks on July 11 2012, he noted the reserves had been designed not to manage fisheries, but to help ensure the health and productivity of Australia’s oceans. The impact on the commercial fishing sector would be restricted to just above 1% of annual catch.
Marine closures enacted specifically for fisheries management can far exceed the extent of the marine reserves in the same area. And only 4% of Commonwealth waters within 100km offshore would be closed to recreational fishing. This is not to trivialise what will be larger impacts on a small number of individual operators or areas.
What the Commonwealth Marine Reserves (CMR) network is designed to do is:
protect areas of high conservation value
fulfil Australia’s international commitments for biodiversity protection
provide a science-based framework for well-audited, adaptive oceans management.
Fisheries restrict themselves more than marine parks do
The comparative lack of impact the CMR network will have on commercial fisheries contrasts with much larger closures enacted for fisheries management by the Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA).
For example, in June 2007, the Commonwealth South-east Marine Reserve network was declared. It contained 12% of the area between 700 and 1000m depth (excluding Macquarie Island), with less than 1% in IUCN zones I or II (Sanctuary or Marine Park). Shortly after the reserve network was declared, AFMA closed this entire depth range to trawling. It wanted to control increasing fishing effort on the unknown but potentially unproductive stocks of the poorly known species at these depths. Some parts have since been reopened, and the AFMA fishery closure now covers 52% of this depth range.
AFMA has implemented permanent fishery closures around Australian sea lion colonies off South Australia. These have associated trigger zones that can be closed to shark gill-netting when maximum by-catch limits are reached. Three of the seven trigger zones (73,180km²) have recently been closed to gill-netting for 18 months. Conversely, gill-netting is prohibited in only 14,553 km² (25%) of the CMR in this area (and in depths mostly beyond 100m).
This raises the interesting situation in which AFMA regulated areas are more restrictive than the proposed CMR network general zoning guidelines for the same area.
20102012, The Conversation Media Group