Zones of contention have anglers angry
Edithburgh recreational fisherman Ian Winton, out on his boat in the waters of the Yorke peninnsula. Picture: Brooke Whatnall
WILL sanctuaries save the marine environment, or will they just spoil the fun for fishers?
————————————————–
THE sun is not yet visible over the Troubridge Island Lighthouse but it will be soon. Shafts of pale orange, yellow and blue light are creeping over the horizon, peeping out of the gaps between the clouds. we are on board a 16ft Seamaster Yalta fishing boat, the Gordon Stanley, heading out from the Edithburgh boat ramp, and Ian Winton is at the helm. in the morning gloom Winton’s high-visibility yellow jacket is the brightest thing for miles around. we are ploughing through the heavy, gunmetal grey seas looking for fish. Whiting to be exact. Weighing on Winton’s mind this morning is the possibility this will all soon come to an end. the patch of water we are traversing could soon be closed to fishing if the State Government gets its way and declares the area a sanctuary zone under its Marine Parks legislation. but this has always been about more than just fishing to Winton. It’s about memory and family. It’s about his father, and it’s about his grandchildren.
The Gordon Stanley is his father’s boat. Gordon Stanley was his father’s name. it was on the Port River 55 years ago that Winton first learned to fish. it was there he got to know his father. "My dad wasn’t a ‘huggy’ sort of bloke, he was a rough diamond," Winton says. he was a fitter and turner and boilermaker but on a Sunday morning, when he wasn’t working overtime, the pair would head out from Snowden’s Beach and drop a hand line from their old, green clinker boat. with Torrens Island and the commercial docks of Port Adelaide as a backdrop they would putter out to the channel markers in the Port River estuary in search of fish. the two would talk about life, about fish, about shared dreams and most importantly the travails of the West Torrens football club.
In 1969 his dad started building a shack at Sultana Point at Edithburgh, using bricks he made in the city. he bought the boat we are cruising in today. Now the baton has passed to his son. "My dad enjoyed the day out more than the actual event of catching fish. I have inherited that trait," Winton says. "whilst I thoroughly enjoy the fishing part, it is being able to take my daughter, her husband and two kids out that gives me the greatest pleasure."
Now Winton, along with the other estimated 240,000 recreational fishers in SA, is worried he is going to lose his freedom to fish. Late last year the State Government released plans for what are known as sanctuary zones across the 19 marine parks that have already been declared in SA waters. in the sanctuaries all fishing, whether it is recreational or commercial, will be banned. the zones take up between 20 and 25 per cent of the marine park area and some run 20km from shore to sea. If the current proposals remain they will account for up to 10 per cent of all state waters.
The proposal has caused outrage across regional SA. Recreational fishers fear the loss of their favourite spots. Regional towns are terrified that tourists and shack owners, who are usually from Adelaide, will disappear, taking away a chunk of their economy. on the Yorke Peninsula more than 40 per cent of ratepayers have their principal place of residence somewhere else.
The only saving grace is the Government has already agreed to exclude all jetties and boat ramps from being part of sanctuaries. but that doesn’t help the commercial fishing industry which says it could lose about 25 per cent of its business under the plan.
State Environment Minister Paul Caica is trying to calm the fears. he says the zones have not yet been settled, and that in the long run the environmental benefits are worth the short-term pain.
The trouble is, no one believes him.
THE night before the pre-dawn fishing trip, Winton is on his feet at the Edithburgh Institute, urging the locals to send a message to the State Government. he is an unlikely revolutionary. A career public servant who is now semi-retired he has set up a ginger group – the Southern Yorke Peninsula Marine Park Community Action Group – to garner numbers to take the fight to North Terrace. he says it’s the first political group he has ever been involved with.
This night is technically a meeting of another group. the State Government has set up what it calls Marine Parks Local Advisory Groups in each of the 19 parks, ostensibly to provide advice to government about where the sanctuary zones should be placed. in reality, in many places the LAGs are becoming the lightning rods for local discontent about a process they believe has been foisted upon them by a State Government that has no interest in the concerns of regional people.
During a couple of days in Edithburgh the same issues are highlighted repeatedly. you don’t need a Newspoll here to tell you there is a startling antipathy towards Mike Rann and his government. People want to know why there are no sanctuaries off Adelaide’s metropolitan beaches. the answer is because there is nothing much worth protecting out there.
There are plenty of conspiracy theories as well.
While large sanctuary zones have been mooted at Edithburgh and the nearby town of Port Morowie, the coast has been kept clear half an hour up the road at Black Point. Derisively referred to as "millionaires row", Black Point is holiday home to wealthy businessmen such as Rob Gerard, Glenn Cooper and Michael Angelakis. the locals at Edithburgh believe the rich are being protected, but the government says there’s nothing worth including in a sanctuary in that area.
Still, tempers are up. there are more than 100 people crammed into the institute on this cool Thursday evening and the atmosphere is one of crackling discontent. When a LAG meeting was last held here last year there were only four people in the public gallery. Now there is loud talk of protests along King William St, of defying the Government and boycotting the process.
The most unpopular man in the room by a comfortable distance is David Pearce, the project co-ordinator for the Department of Environment and Natural Resources. Pearce’s job is to try to gain community support and trust for the marine park. That seems a long way away. he is told he is "talking, pure unadulterated crap" by one person. When he presents a statistic on how much of the state’s sea bed has been mapped, someone else pipes up: "How can we believe that?" If Pearce said grass was green and the sky was blue, no one would believe him.
For the most part, Pearce stands impassively as the plan is picked to pieces. Occasionally his frustration spills over as he continues to insist that the sanctuaries are not immovable, that the very point of the meeting is for the community to tell the Government what it wants. "Most of them are just shocked by the whole thing and want it to go away," he says later. "It’s often hard when you are going out and clearly being told by community members that you are going to ruin their lives, ruin their property values, ruin their fishing, ruin their fun."
But progress is slowly being made. Winton’s action group is now being brought into the process to work alongside the LAG to work up a counter-offer on sanctuary zones it hopes the Government will find acceptable.
The marine park concept was first raised by the Liberal government in the late 1990s. Since then Labor Ministers John Hill, Jay Weatherill and Gail Gago have pushed it forward in increments. Now it’s Caica’s turn and he is clearly aggravated by the process. Known as one of the more approachable and pragmatic members of the Rann Cabinet, he bristles at the perception the Government has already made up its mind on the zones. "part of the problem is that people don’t believe me when I say this is not about destroying commercial fishing, it’s not about destroying recreational fishing," he says. "you can go out there and say it, say it again and then tell them what you have said, and people still won’t listen."
He is also adamant that it’s not a way to control the number of fish caught. That is happening anyway. in 2001 a survey by SA Fisheries said 12.25 million fish were caught by recreational fishers. the next time the survey was done in 2008 that had dropped to 6.52 million. the main reason for this has been new size and bag limits, as well as a marked decrease in the numbers of people going fishing. Caica says sanctuaries are needed to protect all forms of marine life, whether it’s fish, sea grass, reefs, sea slugs, sponges or invertebrates.
Yet Caica should not be surprised by the public’s scepticism. It’s another symptom of what Education Minister Jay Weatherill last year described as the Government’s "announce and defend" approach to public policy. From Mt Barker in the Adelaide Hills, through the Parks Community centre, Cheltenham Race Course and the St Clair Recreation centre land swap, voters have become increasingly agitated by what they perceive as the State Government imposing decisions on them whether they like it or not. All complain of a lack of consultation. others think the Government is taking them for a ride. A common complaint is that last year the fishing community was asked to nominate favourite spots along the coast. the idea was the Government would then avoid popular areas when drawing up sanctuary zones. Most now believe the exact opposite occurred and the Government tricked them into supplying the information. the Department denies this happened.
But there is an irony, then, that when the Government has undertaken probably its most extensive consultation since winning office in 2002 it has so eroded public trust most are not willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. Technically, this is the pre-consultation phase. Official consultation doesn’t start until later in the year when the Government releases updated sanctuary zones.
Caica, himself a recreational fisherman of long-standing, concedes there have been mistakes and not enough has been done to explain the benefits of the scheme, but he but is ironclad in his commitment that no decisions have yet been taken. he says the Government has set no targets about how much water should be covered in sanctuaries. he says he is prepared to ignore scientists who say 10 per cent is the minimum needed. he says he is prepared to push sanctuaries into areas that are not designated as marine parks. he is even prepared to push out the time line, which currently says zones will be officially declared by the middle of next year. "I have told them quite simply if they want to get a rubber and rub out those lines I don’t care as long as we come back with what is a reasonable scale marine park system that actually does preserve that habitat," he says.
The only certainty in the debate is that at some point SA will have a bunch of sanctuaries within its marine parks. This is because in 1993 Australia became a signatory to the United Nation’s Convention on Biological Diversity which dictated that certain areas of the marine environment had to be placed under some form of protection for conservation purposes.
Environmentalists and most marine scientists believe marine parks and sanctuaries will benefit fishing as well as the broader environment. the Australian Marine Sciences Association has about 900 marine scientists as members and is unequivocal in its support of the concept, saying 10 per cent is the minimum "target of all habitat types under full no-take protection". Sabine Dittman, vice president of the Association and a senior lecturer in marine biology at Flinders University, says SA has a unique biodiversity and as much as 90 per cent of the species in state waters are not found anywhere else. "in the scientific community there is pretty much no doubt left about the efficiency of no-take zones," she says.
A report by Dr Melissa Nursey-Bray, from the University of Adelaide, claims experience in Australia and around the world proves marine parks are good for fishing. "while benefits are not always evenly distributed across all marine parks, evidence is clearly showing that abundance, biomass, economic value, habitat and migration routes are all enhanced by the declaration of marine parks," she says. Proponents talk of the "spillover effect", where the sanctuaries allow fish to breed in greater numbers in a healthier environment until eventually they "spill" out of the protected area.
But dissenter Professor Bob Kearney, a fisheries expert at Canberra University, says the science of marine parks is "more consistent with preconceived bias than scientific assess¬ment or proper precautionary management".
Part of the problem is the starting point for the argument. Opponents of the scheme want the Govern¬ment to identify threats to the marine environment. once those are established then steps can be taken to safeguard marine life. the Government says it has identified areas which are pristine, or close to it, and wants to preserve what is there. it says the concept is exactly the same as having a national park on the land.
Opponents argue marine parks are basically a fisheries management tool and question why existing remedies such as bag and size limits and designated fishing seasons cannot do the same thing. the Government says marine parks are not just about fish but all ocean life.
But there is also resentment from those who believe they have been careful custodians of the sea and the perceived implication that they have somehow damaged the environment. Farmer Andrew Gillfillan, the head of the LAG on Kangaroo Island, says people would be happier with a threat-based model because it would make sense. "any environmental initiative that works on a threat-based analysis will have island support," he says. "we collectively know the ocean far better than the Department of Environment and Natural Resources."
It’s hard to find anyone who does not broadly support the idea of sanctuaries. What is in question is the size and location. in Edithburgh, the town’s last commercial fisherman, Russell Boord, says he would lose about 80 per cent of his fishing grounds if the present zones are implemented. Boord says fish stocks are healthy in the area and priority should be dealing with some of the more immediate threats to the ocean. "the biggest threat is introduced species," he says. Boord says ballast dumped from cargo ships, which have come from as far away as Russia, can carry new and unpredictable species to SA waters and is a much bigger problem to habitat protection than commercial fishing.
In 2009-10, commercial fishing in state waters netted 47,581 tonnes worth about $202 million a year to the state’s economy. according to the 2007 Marine Park Act any commercial fisher who is displaced because of the sanctuary zones is entitled to compensation. Caica has pledged the sanctuaries will have a maximum of 5 per cent commercial impact but has also criticised the industry for not participating in the discussion. "nobody wins a Mexican stand-off so we want them to come to the table and help us design a representative marine park system," he says.
Gary Morgan represents the commercial fishing industry and dismisses the notion it is not pulling its weight. he wants to know what the formula for compensation will be before he commits the industry to serious talks. he estimates the current zones could wipe out a quarter of the industry. "we are happy to play the game, we just want to know what the rules of the game are," he says.
Back on board the Gordon Stanley, Ian Winton says if the zones aren’t changed his days of fishing from the boat are over. he says he will be forced go too far out and that can be dangerous in a small craft. Instead he will just have to fish from the Edithburgh jetty.
Not that the fight is over. the memory of his father will push him on. "he never avoided a fight over a matter of principle. he still provides me inspiration when the going gets tough."