By Francesca Davis
Supposedly one the world's best controlled fisheries, the cod fishery in the Barents Sea, north of Scandinavia, is on the verge of biological collapse. This is the only remaining cod fishery in the world and is the last in a series of "vanishing fisheries". Commercial fleets trawling nets big enough to swallow 48 double-decker buses are emptying our oceans. Subsidised by governments, they use military technologies such as radar and sonar to allow night fishing and fishing at previously impossible depths.
It is estimated that a fleet half the size of the current world fleet could fish to the limits of sustainability. Worldwide, 13 out of 17 major fisheries are depleted or in steep decline and in Australia only nine of 100 commercial species could survive increased exploitation.
Fishing is not the only commercial activity destroying the oceans. Toxic waste dumping, pollution, poaching, bio-prospecting, aquaculture and global warming are also endangering one of the world's most important food sources.
The severe depletion of marine life and the destabilising of sea and coastal ecosystems has led to the declaration of 1998 as the International Year of the Oceans and the recognition that all governments must act to avert the crisis.
A global treaty on overfishing signed in August 1995 deals only with straddling stocks: the 20% of world fish stocks that cross the 200-mile territorial limits of the world's states. The treaty does not reduce the size of industrial fishing fleets or control the technology they use, nor does it cover the remaining 80% of stocks that reside in waters for which specific governments are responsible.
Although international agreements regulate areas ranging from whaling, endangered species and marine pollution to climate change and biodiversity, most leave the major responsibility to individual governments. Since most ocean-related problems are global, the possibility of real solutions is undermined.
Since the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea was drawn up in 1994, the Australian government has been responsible for oceans up to 200 nautical miles from our coastline. This 11 million square kilometres includes the full range of climatic zones. There are around 4000 species of fish, the largest number of seagrasses found anywhere, and one of the largest and most species-diverse mangrove areas. Australia also has the largest coral reef system on the planet. Because the temperate south has been geographically isolated for around 40 million years, 80 to 90% of Australia's species are unique.
Coalition record
So far, only 3.5% of Australia's marine territory has been set aside for conservation in a system of regions known as Marine Protected Areas. The Great Barrier Reef makes up more than 80% of this area.
Since its election, the Coalition federal government has supported many projects, (like the Hinchinbrook marina and the Nathan and Dawson super-dams in Queensland), which will significantly affect coastal regions. It has given the go ahead to shale mining exploration in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and cut funding to the park authority by $3 million. It has weakened measures for tracking toxic waste dumping and stood aside to allow Japanese big business hijack the Commission for the Conservation of the Southern Bluefin Tuna to have Japan's catch quota increased by 1400 tonnes.
Meanwhile, vital measures to reduce excess fishing capacity by cutting subsidies, control fishing technology and establish fishing quotas have not been implemented.
Most significantly, the Coalition government has used the "multiple use" status of most protected areas to allow immediately destructive and unsustainable practices to continue in our marine areas.
Theoretically, Australia's oceans are managed under a system of "no-take", buffer-zone and multiple-use areas. Many environmentalists argue that it is inadequate to regulate the type and quantity of marine species removed from the environment and that the ecosystems must be preserved and protected so that the species can survive. This is especially true in a context of general ignorance about marine ecosystems; only 5% of Australia's marine territory is even mapped.
A no-take area is one where the removal of wildlife and natural resources is prohibited and human activity is strictly limited. These areas offer marine scientists relatively untouched ecosystems for research and serve as reference points for measuring the sustainability of resource use in other areas. They also protect sensitive breeding grounds for commercially exploited fish stocks.
Multiple-use areas are those in which several uses are allowed, including commercial and recreational fishing, tourism, scientific research and education, and mineral exploration and mining. For these areas to be useful, the multiple uses must also be ecological sustainable. Conservation cannot simply be a "use" which is pitted against all the other uses. Rather, conserving biodiversity must take precedence over industry needs.
In practice, the multiple-use classification has been a cover for commercial exploitation of protected areas. On land, it has been used to allow mining and forestry companies access to protected areas. In the seas, it has been used the same way.
Unprotected
Only 4.6% of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park is protected in no-take areas. More than 90% of it is zoned as available for commercial and recreational activities, including intensive tourism.
According to the Greens' Senator Bob Brown, the federal government has allowed commercial fishing on eight previously protected reefs in the park. Only 21.8% of the reefs, 2.4% of lagoons and 1.1% of the reef slope are protected. Marine conservation agencies' guideline that at least 15% of all marine ecosystem types should be within no-take areas has been nowhere near met.
In the Great Australian Bight Marine Park, the management plan preceded the park's establishment. This allowed industry a considerable say in defining the park's boundaries.
Even in the commonwealth portion of the park, habitats will only get protected status if they fit into a narrow rectangle along the sea floor. Mineral exploration and commercial fishing will remain largely unrestricted. According to Brown, the government has already allowed mining, mineral exploration and tuna fishing in the Great Australian Bight Whale Sanctuary. Margi Prideaux, the Australian Conservation Foundation's biodiversity coordinator, says it is unclear whether this park will ever have any no-take areas.
The draft oceans policy released by federal environment minister Senator Robert Hill's department in May is a commitment from the Coalition to do more of the same. Couched in fine words about sustainability and biodiversity, it proposes none of the moves necessary to protect our oceans. There are no references to no-take marine reserves and no indication that multiple-use management will be underpinned by a commitment to biodiversity conservation. On the contrary, the draft policy asserts: "Any reforms must reflect the need for stability in the investment climate and minimum necessary compliance costs for ecological sustainable commercial venture."
The draft policy is peppered with terms such as "market incentives" and "tradeable rights", and includes plans to increase oil and minerals exploration. It rejects environmentalists' proposal for a separate agency to manage all activities in the marine environment, instead making much of its plan to "retain and build on existing sectoral resource management arrangements". This would leave ocean management in the hands of agencies responsible for developing ocean industries. According to Prideaux, these agencies have never been made accountable for their impact on the marine environment.
The government's proposed arrangements for representing environmental concerns in decision making about fisheries management will involve consultation between government agencies, scientists, the fishing industry, conservation agencies and non-government organisations. However, the policy states that consideration of environmental needs "should recognise that arrangements for managing some sectoral resource uses (e.g., petroleum, minerals and fisheries) will properly continue to emphasise other natural resource and administrative features". There are no specific plans for fishing quotas and reducing the fishing fleet at a commonwealth level.
The recent shift to share management fisheries, which give individual fishers property rights in the form of shares, and the emphasis on market tools such as transferable quotas, reflect the Coalition's general approach to oceans management: they are just another collection of resources to be privatised and sold off. The International Year of the Ocean does not look too promising for our oceans.