The Australian government contributed $52 million to the development of the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) developed by the University of Tasmania with support from CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research.  According to government information, “support will also be provided for the eMarine Information Infrastructure to store, analyse, retrieve and share data once it has been collected”.

http://www.imos.org.au/

The previous Australian government [the Howard government] handed out hundreds of millions of dollars to compensate commercial fishing interests following the last campaign Ms Zethoven ran.   That was when she worked for the World Wildlife Fund (WWF).    

The fishing industry of north Queensland has been gutted over the last decade, but still environment groups come back for more – this time with money from Philadelphia in the US.

Last week they announced success:

“Conservation Groups Welcome Government’s ‘First Big Step’ to Protect the Coral Sea: Sydney, Australia – 05/19/2009 – Conservation groups today welcomed the announcement by Federal Environment Minister Peter Garrett to establish a Conservation Zone over the entire Coral Sea within Australian waters and called on the Minister to ensure sufficient resources for his Department to carry out a full and prompt assessment of the area.”

In fact, according to Jim Turnour, the federal member for Leichhardt, all that the Minister announced was the need for tourism operators to get permits, no businesses have been closed down and no new bans on fishing have been enforced or planned as demanded by PEW.   At his blog yesterday he wrote:

“The Coral Sea Conservation Zone was announced by Minister Garrett and the debate about World Heritage listing of Cape York came back into focus following a meeting of Environment Ministers in Tasmania…

“Prior to the Coral Sea Conservation Zone being established the PEW Environmental Foundation had released a report and been campaigning for a no take zone in the region. There was rightly a lot of anger from local fishers who would have been completely excluded from the region. The PEW proposal and angry fishers had received much media attention in the lead up to the Minister declaring the Conservation Zone, so when it was announced I know that many fishers assumed that PEW had won in their campaign to have the Coral Sea become a no-take zone.

“What was announced however has not impacted on recreational or commercial fishers in the Coral Sea. PEW have not got their no- take zone and I will continue to fight any such proposal. Existing tourism operators and other commercial users of the area will have to obtain free permits to continue operating, but nobody’s business is being closed down by a no-take zone as proposed by PEW.

A month ago Mr Turnour wrote:

“Wherever I go at the moment whether it is getting out and about in the community, listening to the radio or reading the newspaper, an issue that has people talking is a proposal by the PEW Environmental Group to establish a Marine Park covering the entire Coral Sea.

“They want to establish a no-take zone, effectively banning fishing in an area bounded by the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, and our maritime border with PNG, Solomon Islands and New Caledonia. This is an area of more than one million square kilometres of sea.

“In the past few weeks I have had the recreational fishing industry, commercial fishing industry, marine tourism operators, Super Yacht Group and CAFNEC all meet with me and discuss the issue. And last night I attended a meeting of more than 600 fishers opposed to the plan.

“I’ve told them all the same thing. I don’t support the PEW proposal and that I have made my views clear to the Minister for the Environment Peter Garrett.

“Given the level of community concern and the amount of misinformation this campaign has created, I will be raising the matter with the Prime Minister when I return to Parliament for budget sittings.

“At the meeting last night, it was pointed out that the PEW document proposing the marine park had a letter from the Prime Minister within it. The letter doesn’t endorse the proposal and is in fact a letter to commemorate the 66th anniversary of the Battle of the Coral Sea. PEW argues that the heritage significance of the Coral Sea battle is one reason to create the park and have included the letter from the PM to highlight its significance. PEW clearly, through quoting the PM and other Ministers in relation to the Coral Sea battle, are seeking to imply broader support for their proposal than they have.

“I need to make it clear the PEW proposal is not endorsed by the Rudd Government…

“I don’t believe that the evidence put forward by PEW makes sense. The arguments from the conservation groups in support of their proposal are quite confusing. On the one hand they say that the region is in pristine condition because there is not a lot of fishing activity, yet on the other hand they argue that the region is under threat. The Battle of the Coral Sea is a significant war time event worth commemorating but you don’t need to create a marine park of 1 million square kilometres.”

*********************

Notes and Links

http://www.jimturnour.com.au/jims-blog/159-opposition-to-pews-coral-sea-plans-strengthens.html

http://www.jimturnour.com.au/jims-blog/177-environmental-debate.html

http://www.pewtrusts.org/news_room_detail.aspx?id=52166

The picture, taken from a public meeting in Cairns opposing the PEW proposal, is republished from the Fishing World website, http://www.fishingworldmag.com.au/news/garrett-govt-committed-to-mbpp-no-favours-for-pew

Jim Turnour, the member for Leichhardt in the Australian parliament, is Jennifer Marohasy’s younger brother.

According to NSW Deputy Premier, Carmel Tebbuts, there is no evidence of increased shark numbers in NSW but Ms Tebbuts does admit cleaner waterways around Sydney (via SMH).

According to the Department of Primary Industries chief scientist, Steve Kennelly, because waters are cleaner there are more sharks.  Hang on! This is not what the Deputy Premier said.

Professor Kennelly explained we are seeing a healthy ecosystem, “to the point where we’re getting whales underneath the Sydney Harbour Bridge and … lots of good bait fish coming in, tailor, king fish and so on and sharks feed on those things (via ABC).

Professor Kennelly did not mention that there have also been bans on commercial fishing in Sydney Harbour since a dioxin scare in January 2006 – this would also probably mean more fish.  

According to Professor Kennelly not even new bans on hunting sharks (due to new fishing quotas) will impact on the risk of shark attacks (also via ABC Online).  

Let’s summarize, sharks eat fish, so if there are more fish you might expect more sharks, add to this, new bans on hunting sharks, so again expect more sharks.   More sharks might increase the risk of shark attacks.   “Nah”, suggest some bureaucrats and politicians!

Wouldn’t it be better if government admitted that policies intended to increase the numbers of fish and sharks, are having an effect, and so the risk of shark attack could increase – and then explain how to mitigate like not swimming at dawn or dusk.

The graph though was not of the highest quality, and so Louis Hissink has had it redrawn:

The original post is here: http://www.jennifermarohasy.com/blog/archives/003005.html
Thanks Louis for the better quality graph.

from http://www.fao.org/DOCREP/005/Y2787E/y2787e1l.gif

The study entitled ‘Climate change and long term fluctuations of commercial catches: possibilities of forecasting’ concludes that 60-year climate oscillations correspond to the regular fluctuations of the populations and catches of the main commercial fish species.

“Analysing roughly 30-year alternation of the so-called “climatic epochs” characterised by the variation in the Atmospheric Circulation Index (ACI), the study revealed two ACI-dependent groups of major commercial species correlated positively with either “meridional” or “zonal” air mass transport on the hemispheric scale.

“Climate periodicity serves as a basis for a predictive model of the population and catches of major
commercial fish species. The model has two basic limitations.

(1) It is applicable to the abundant fish species only (commercial catch > 1.0 – 1.5 million tons) yielded over large areas, such as North Pacific or North Atlantic as a whole;

(2) The model is intended to analyse and forecast the long-term trends in the population of major commercial species with the assumption that general intensity of commercial fisheries will stay at its average level over the last 20 – 25 years.

“The concept of generating forecasts of anthropogenic climate change and consequent changes in fish production is beyond the scope of this study. However, there is a clear link between fish production and climate, so projecting future climate changes is of importance. Not only can climate be used to forecast commercial fish yields, but also it may be possible to estimate general changes in biological production on the global scale. It is therefore important to maintain databases on routine fisheries data and climate indices in the long term, in order to track these critical processes.”

This study trashes most of the classic examples of fishery collapse due to overfishing. Incidentally, the Pacific Dedadal Oscillation (PDO) has this year switched into its cooler phase.

Anthropogenic global warming (AGW) catastrophists are now belatedly accepting natural influences on global temperature to explain the current cooling. If natural cooling is possible then warming must be also and a similar amount of natural influence to that now being attributed to cooling would reduce the greenhouse contribution to the previously observed warming to little or nothing. AGW is beginning to look like the more and more convoluted epicycles invented to maintain the geocentric theory before it finally had to be abandoned.

Walter Starck
Townsville, Australia

————
Klyashtorin L.B. 2001. Climate change and long term fluctuations of commercial catches: the possibility of forecasting. FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 410, 98p. FAO (Food Agriculture Organization) of the United Nations, Rome.

‘In Cyclic Climate Changes and Fish Productivity’ L.B. Klyashtorin and A. A. Lyubushin consider the relationships between climate changes and the productivity of ocean ecosystems.

Analyses of climate index fluctuations and populations of major commercial fish species for the last 1500 years allowed the authors to characterize the 50-70 year climate fluctuations and fish production dynamics.

Their simple stochastic model suggests that it is possible to predict the likely trends of basic climatic indices and thus some commercial fish populations for several decades ahead.

The results obtained allow the old question to be revisit: which factors are more influential for the long-term fluctuations of major commercial stocks, climate or commercial fisheries?

The book is available from VNIRO Publishing (230 pages,160 figures, 2 color insets). Price: $59 (hard cover) including mailing. You can also order by mail from Russia, Moscow, 117997,Profsoyuznaya st.90, ”Science-Export”; by fax 7(495) 334-7140; 7(495)-334-7479; and by email naukaexport@naukaran.ru. Upon receipt of the order an invoice will be forwarded. The book will be mailed to you after receipt of payment. Mailing usually takes 3-6 days.

Fishermen are unhappy with radio advertisements sponsored by the Marine Stewardship Council promoting their March 2nd “Sustainable Seafood Day”. “Buy only sustainable seafood products branded with the MSC gold label”, the advertisement urges listeners.

“We haven’t been advised of Sustainable Seafood day”, snorts Rodney Treloggen, CEO of the Tasmanian Rock Lobster Fisherman’s Association. “This aggressive campaign is really only about internal certification industry rivalry. Its very bad for the local fishing industry to send false messages to consumers when we’re working so hard to protect our fish stocks and have achieved so much in this region.” Many Tasmanian Rock Lobster Fisherman’s Association members has undertaken a voluntary industry initiated program, the award winning, Clean Green, MSC’s main Australian rival, which also runs best practice environmental and fishery stock management awareness courses for local fishermen. “We’ve yet to see the market need to sign up for MSC’s certification program” says Treloggen. It’s very expensive at $200,000 per fishery. I’m not sure of the benefits to Tasmania, given the success of our own sustainability initiatives.” All exporting Australian fisheries must be certified with the Federal Environmental Protection Biodiversity and Conservation Act. “We must be certified every 5 years and if we don’t get it, we’re can’t export. It’s more far reaching than MSC certification”, says Treloggen.

The Marine Stewardship Council is a prominent UK charitable foundation, sponsored by leading British supermarket chains, Tescos, Marks and Spencers, Whole Foods Market Inc and multinational food corporation Unilever, Europe’s largest seafood importer. Seafood sustainability certification has become big business in Europe with consumers increasingly urged to shop with their consciences. But MSC’s certification outreach has had little impact in Australia to date with only two regional fishing bodies, the West Australian Rock Lobster and the Australian Mackerel Icefish (Heard and MacDonald Islands) fisheries signed on to its program.

The MSC’s fifteen month certification process is “onerous”, according to West Australian Fishing Industry Council CEO Guy Leyland, but worth it for Australian fisheries aiming to sell in US and UK retail markets where consumers are increasingly demanding independent third party sustainability certification for their seafood products. Although West Australian rock lobster is the only Australian fishery certified in WAFIC’s catchment to date, very few if any of its MSC gold labeled products are actually available to Australian consumers. Why promote the MSC exclusive “Sustainable Seafood Day” when there are so few certified products available to Australian seafood buyers? “It’s political”, says Leyland. “It’s about creating consumer awareness so there’ll be demand for sustainability certification”.

“That’s a complete load of…”, says Treloggan. “It’s a negative scare campaign, manipulating local consumers to reject Tasmania’s award winning Clean Green standards. Why promote a consumer branding program with no products available if they’re not trying to muscle in on local certification turf and create serious doubt in Australian shoppers’ minds about the integrity of our industry?” In Britain earlier this month, another aggressive MSC sponsored sustainable seafood campaign backfired badly, when condemnation from the UK’s statuary marine agency Seafish, the Scottish Salmon Producers’ organization and rival certification body Friends of the Sea accused MSC of “confusing rather than educating consumers”, by sponsoring the World Wildlife Foundation’s “Stinky Fish” Sustainable Seafood Shopping Survey. The WWF’s online viral marketing campaign is anchored by an animated puppet, Stinky Fish who interrogates restaurant owners and fish sellers about their seafood’s sources. Launched in mid January, Stinky Fish advises seafood shoppers to only buy fish that bears the exclusive MSC gold label for sustainability fishing assurance because “everything else is stinky!” Although MSC staff initially believed Stinky Fish would raise awareness about sustainable fishing amongst a hard to reach online audience, “they did not foresee the negative reaction that the video would engender with its partners and colleagues in the seafood industry”, MSC said in a statement last week. As the charity distanced itself from the fishing furor, it advised WWF to immediately remove any reference to MSC from its website.

“Seafood Sustainability Day” is designed to raise Australian consumers’ awareness quickly”, says Duncan Ledbetter, MSC’s Asian Pacific representative. “You’ve got to remember that as much as 70% of seafood sold in Australia is imported. A lot of the fish products available in Coles and Woolies are not from sustainable fisheries, so looking for a sustainability label is a good thing”. Ledbetter insists that MSC’s radio advertising campaign doesn’t condemn non certified seafood but Australia’s fishing industry experts worry that sending confusing messages to shoppers will do far more harm than good.

from The Mercury in Tasmania, Saturday March 1, 2008

This book is the first comprehensive analysis of fisheries management in Australia. It provides practical insight into the cross-disciplinary tools of fisheries management. It takes the reader away from the outdated notion of “managing the fish” to the reality of managing human behaviour. It does so without losing track of the fundamental need to consider the ecosystem and its components.

The book covers a diverse range of contemporary topics including: sharing fisheries resources between commercial and recreational fishers, marine park planning, current regulatory and policy environments, consultative and participatory frameworks, by-catch mitigation and fisheries habitat management. It is a must for tertiary students studying fisheries, fisheries management professionals, the fishing industry and anyone else with an interest in how our valuable but finite fisheries resources are managed.

… and the book will be released by Federation Press in January and retail for $66.

Congratulations to Daryl.

“Marine biologist Walter Starck said Australians were being forced to consume lower quality seafood imports, many from seriously depleted fisheries, even though Australia had a relative abundance in some species that was being underutilised.”

So begins the front page article entitled ‘Fish bans raise food poison risk’ in todays The Weekend Australian.

Yesterday Crikey.com.au ran a similar article citing figures from Walter Starck published at this blog in November 2005.

“Australia has the third largest territorial fishing zone … ‘green management’ has reduced our catch to the smallest in the OECD. We now import an ever-increasing amount of the fish we eat. Here are some fishery production figures (in metric tonnes) from 2003″

So, is there a chance we might see some policy changes? We don’t need to import fish. We shouldn’t be importing so much fish.

I see the current situation, at least in part, a consequence of the WWF Save the Reef Campaign. This campaign was explicitly about shutting down our northern fisheries and at the same time generating membership for WWF.

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