An assessment of the proposed establishment of marine parks in the South East of South Australia
An independent report prepared for the South Eastern Professional Fishermans Association
Professor Colin Buxton, Dr. Caleb Gardner, Emeritus Professor Robert Kearney AM, Dr. Paul McShane, Dr. Gary Morgan
March, 2009
Key Findings
• The proposed Marine Parks 18 and 19 in the South East are unlikely to contribute substantially to protecting and conserving marine biodiversity and marine habitats. It is likely that there will be few quantifiable conservation benefits from their creation but considerable and as yet undisclosed costs.
• “Hot spots” of high conservation value in Areas 18 and 19 were identified in the DEH documentation as:
1. Blackfellows Caves/Nene Valley,
2. Blanche Bay/Cape Northumberland,
3. Eight Mile Creek/Brown Bay/Green Point (and offshore reefs),
4. Ellards Creek/Piccaninnie Ponds,
5. Cape Banks/Canunda,
6. Lacepede Bay/Cape Jaffa/Margaret Brock Reef,
7. Guichen Bay/Baudin Rocks/Cape Dombey/Little Dip,
8. Nora Creina Bay,
9. Penguin Island/Cape Martin/Beachport, and
10. Coorong.
• Threats to marine biodiversity and the marine environment in the South-east have been identified but their management in relation to these hot spots, or elsewhere, has not been addressed. It is therefore not possible to assess the relevance of the outer boundaries of marine parks to effective protection of marine environments.
• The DEH proposal creates the impression that marine parks will automatically provide protection for the marine environment against all threats.
• MPAs are unlikely to be effective in protecting the environment and biodiversity against many current and potential threats in the waters of South Australia.
• The DEH marine park proposal does not include any process, or describe the costs and funding required, for collecting data to monitor the impacts of marine parks. Unless these data are collected there will be no way of knowing whether the parks actually achieve their stated aim of protecting marine biodiversity and habitats.
• The DEH process is regarded as a first step in the establishment of a SARSMPA, to be followed by the identification of specific highly protected no-take areas.
The views expressed in this report are those of the authors and not necessarily those of the institutions to which they are affiliated.
• The need the South East, as elsewhere, is to properly identify the threats to the marine environment and its biodiversity and then to address those threats through an appropriate, risk-based management response. The management response, to be targeted and effective should be able to utilise all of the available management tools, including existing legislation and regulations.
• It is significant that the DEH proposal for marine parks specifically excludes the area (Gulf St Vincent Bioregion) that was identified by its own scientific study as being of the highest priority for the establishment of marine protected areas, but specifically includes the area (Coorong Bioregion) that was identified as of low priority. This suggests that the proposed marine parks do not appropriately address, and apparently are not intended to resolve, real marine conservation issues in South Australia’s marine environment.
• In accordance with previous fisheries risk assessments, rock lobster fishing in the South-East region is considered a minor or negligible threat to marine biodiversity and marine habitats. Moreover, this industry is effectively and sustainably managed reducing the specific benefit of MPA as an additional management tool. However, it is acknowledged by the industry that there are some management measures that still need refinement. These include (a) the entrapment threat, although minor, to sea lions in pots (b) the threat, although minor, to turtles and whales of entanglement in ropes and (c) full implementation of previous recommendations by DEWHA to install escape gaps in pots to allow escapement of finfish and undersized lobster.
• As the fisheries of South Australia are already well managed by international standards, the necessary management of significant threats is unlikely to include the need for measures such as ‘no-take’ areas in order to provide protection.
• Establishment of no take areas needs not only to be based on careful threat assessment, but also needs to be carefully reasoned in terms of how no-take will provide a specific benefit, for example, as a reference area, to protect threatened species or to protect areas of special significance to name a few. Fishing should not automatically be seen to be inconsistent with conservation values. .
• Therefore it is not considered good governance to take action, such as declaring no-take fishing zones until all other threats in that zone had been assessed to have been managed to the same level of ecological sustainability (management must not be disproportionate to the magnitude of the threat, Commonwealth of Australia 1992). Even then for cost-effectiveness any fishing closure must be on a gear-type by gear-type basis and not simply blanket bans regardless of which form of fishing might be causing an impact.
I. Introduction
This report has been commissioned to provide a scientific assessment of the South Australian Government’s proposal to declare 19 marine parks in South Australia covering 46% of State waters. This series of marine parks is being established with the stated objective of protecting and conserving marine biological diversity and marine habitats in South Australian waters.
This report examines (a) whether, and to what extent, the proposed marine parks address the current and future threats to marine biodiversity and marine habitats in the south east area and (b) the effectiveness with which the broader, State-wide DEH marine park process, as proposed in South Australia, addresses its stated objective of ensuring the protection and conservation of marine biodiversity and habitats.
The report specifically examines the proposal for the two marine parks in the south-east of South Australia (known as Park No’s 18 & 19).
There is general agreement on the need to achieve good marine conservation outcomes consistent with principles of ecologically sustainable development (ESD). Users of the marine environment in the South-east, including the recreational fishing, diving and boating sector and the commercial fishing industry, are particularly interested in such outcomes simply because their recreational opportunities and their future livelihoods and economic prosperity (and hence that of the region as a whole) are intimately dependent on a healthy marine environment. All seafood consumers also have a vested interest in the continued supply of the wide variety of products from sustainable and cost-efficient fishing industries.
It is therefore critical that, whatever management and conservation action is taken, the outcome of maintaining a healthy marine environment and protecting it from man-induced threats is achieved. This report therefore addresses the issue of whether the proposed marine parks achieve this outcome and also whether they are the best and most cost-effective way of achieving it.
Kearney (2009)2 concluded that ‘It cannot be established….that the proposed SARSMPA [South Australian Representative System of Marine Protected Areas] is an appropriate, adequate or cost-effective strategy to fulfil obligations to conserve, protect and sustainably use marine biodiversity’.
Kearney (op cit.) clearly spells out the national and international commitments to conserve biodiversity and sustainably use natural resources, including those that underpin the commitment to establish the South Australian Representative System of Marine Protected Areas (SARSMPA).
2 Kearney, R. (2009). Commitments to the conservation and protection of marine resources by the Government of South Australia, Report to the South Australian Fishing Industry (confidential).
We concur that there is (growing) international recognition that a system of protected areas is not the only management action necessary for conservation of biodiversity or ecosystems.
We agree therefore with Kearney’s (op cit.) interpretation that the design principles articulated by DEH (DEH 2008) for the SARSMPA are unlikely to achieve national and international commitments, specifically that several requirements seem to have not been or indeed will not be met by the proposed SARSMPA, including:
- to identify activities that threaten biodiversity;
- to sustainably use marine resources and promote industries which do so;
- to establish the cost-effectiveness and appropriateness of the SARSMPA; and
- to establish the efficacy or success of the SARSMPA to conserve biodiversity.
II. The rationale and process for declaring large marine parks in South Australia
The marine parks that are proposed for South Australia by DEH cover 46% of the State’s territorial sea, which in most instances is to the 3-mile state waters limit.
The DEH marine park declaration process is based on the Commonwealth/State Agreement to establish a National Representative System of Marine Protected Areas (ANZECC,1999)3, which in turn is based on a number of International Agreements on conservation and biodiversity to which Australia is a signatory. The ANZECC agreement, which is explicitly based on the concept of integrated ecosystem management, sets out a series of goals and criteria for establishing a system of multiple use MPAs. The criteria agreed upon included a 3-step process of (a) Identification (b) Selection and (c) Declaration.
Australia is indeed committed to establish, through this agreed process, a system of representative networks of marine protected areas (Environment Australia 1998)4. However, marine protected areas are not necessarily synonymous with marine parks. As a result, many of the DEH arguments used to support their marine park process are based on principles that are specific to no-take marine protected areas. Importantly, the details of management arrangements which would provide protection through the proposed marine park process have not been articulated by the Government.
The Government’s documentation on marine parks and objective 1(a) of the recent Marine Parks Act clearly attempts to create the impression that marine park benefits are automatic and will intuitively include protection for the marine environment. The inference may be that anybody who questions the proposed system of marine parks is opposed to marine protection.
3 Australia and New Zealand Environment and Conservation Council, ANZECC (1999), Strategic Plan of Action for the National Representative System of Marine Protected Areas: A Guide for Action by Australian Governments Including the Guidelines For Establishing the National Representative System of Mrine Protected Areas, Environment Australia, Canberra
4 Environment Australia (1998).
South Australia has great need for protection of its marine and other aquatic environments and the community and particularly the fishing industry, whose livelihoods depend on a healthy and sustainable marine environment, support this. The Coorong and coastal waters of the Adelaide region are excellent examples of what happens when the real threats are not acknowledged and effectively managed.
It is thus significant that the DEH proposal for marine parks specifically excludes the area (Gulf St Vincent Bioregion) that was identified by its own scientific study as being of the highest priority for the establishment of marine protected areas, but specifically includes the area (Coorong Bioregion) that was identified as of low priority. This suggests that the proposed marine parks do not appropriately address, and apparently are not intended to resolve, real marine conservation issues in South Australia’s marine environment.
South Australia needs to conserve and protect marine biodiversity through a process that properly identifies the threats to the marine environment and to its biodiversity and then to address those threats through an appropriate management response. An appropriate management response in each instance may draw on a number of possible actions and not be confined to a single response, such as for example no-take areas. This also means that if particular anthropogenic activities do not constitute a risk to the conservation value/s then they should be compatible with conservation objectives and permissible in a marine protected area. Thus assessment of the ecological risk is a key element of determining which threats are real and which threats need to be managed.
The identification of significant threats to the marine environment and developing an appropriate response to addressing those threats is so fundamental to good marine conservation that it has been endorsed by Governments, International Organisations and NGOs at international and national level on many occasions (e.g. IUCN 19915, ANZECC Agreement 1999). This involves a process of providing effective protection to ecosystems and/or biota that are threatened by, first, identifying the threats and those things at risk and then utilising the full range of management options available to deal with those threats.
The level of any threat to the marine environment also needs to be taken into account in the management process. By signing the Intergovernmental Agreement on the Environment, the South Australian Government agreed that “a representative system of protected areas encompassing terrestrial, freshwater, estuarine and marine environments” is important for conservation (Commonwealth of Australia 1992a)6. The South Australian Government is obliged under this agreement to “ensuring that measures adopted should be cost-effective and not be disproportionate to the significance of the environmental problems” (emphasis added, Commonwealth of Australia op cit.)
5 International Union for the Conservation of Nature, IUCN (1991). Guidelines for establishing marine protected areas, IUCN, Gland Switzerland in collaboration with the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.
6 Commonwealth of Australia (1992a)….
III. The proposed Marine Parks 18 & 19 in the SouthEast of South Australia
• Current measures for protection of marine biodiversity and marine habitats
In the South-east region of South Australia there are a number of existing areas which for various purposes and under specific legislation have been proclaimed to provide protection for marine biodiversity and marine habitats in the area. These existing measures, including the Fisheries Resources Management Act (2007) and Commonwealth and State environmental legislation protect specific habitats and species, including endangered or threatened species.
It is surprising that the effectiveness of these existing closed areas and of other legislation in providing protection to marine biodiversity and habitats in the areas has not been rigorously assessed as part of the marine parks process. Such an assessment and the lessons learned could not only guide a more effective process of examining marine parks as a mechanism for marine conservation but would also allow the current proposal to complement, rather than duplicate or over-ride existing protective measures. It could also help with the necessary evaluation of the cost effectiveness of marine parks, which is currently lacking in the DEH documentation.
It is also of note that a previous Government study (Edyvane, 1999) did consider this issue of existing protection and combined this with the conservation attributes and the existing and potential threats to prioritise the need, by bioregion, for marine protected areas as part of the SARSMPA.
• Identification of threats to marine ecosystems and biodiversity in the southeast of South Australia
Although the boundaries of the proposed marine parks in South Australia have been delineated, the threats to the marine environment that these marine parks are designed to address, and how they will address them, have not been articulated. This is not particularly surprising since neither the DEH documentation nor the Marine Parks Act 2007 contain a process for identifying threats as the basis for the declaration of marine parks – the stated objective is to provide ‘protection’ without specifying what the threats are and why, therefore, protection is needed, and how this protection is to be provided.
As noted above, however, the issue of identifying threats so they can be managed appropriately is a fundamental cornerstone of marine conservation and to ignore it is to guarantee that the proposed process of marine park declaration will fail in providing effective and efficient marine conservation outcomes.
Where threats have been identified, they have been on the basis of threats to the viability of the proposed marine park (e.g. Baker, 2004, part 3, p. 262), not threats to marine ecosystems and/or biota. This appears to be ideology, and not logic, in that it implies that the process follows a pattern of (a) declare marine parks in the absence of any rigorous process of identifying threats to the marine environment, then (b) identify the threats to the marine park.
Potential risks to marine biodiversity have been stated by DEH to be:
• Coastal marine discharges
• Coastal development
• Aquaculture development
• Fishing issues
• Introduced marine pests
• Oil spills
• Oil and mineral exploration and mining
• Marine debris and dumping of wastes
• Noise pollution
• Physical disturbance of habitats
How the marine parks will address each of these threats has not been described. This is fundamentally important and must be done before consideration is given to the outer boundaries of the SARSMPA. Significantly, the only threat that has been proposed to be managed in the marine park process is that of fishing. Fishing however, is the only issue that has been demonstrated to be already ecologically sustainably managed in South Australia
Edyvane (1999)7 has undertaken an assessment of the need for marine protected areas in the inshore waters of South Australia, based on the ANZECC commitments for establishing a National Representative System of Marine Protected Areas to ensure marine biodiversity conservation. Her study concluded (Edyvane, op. cit. p. 99 and p. 101, Table 5.11) that based on the criteria of existing reservation status, adequacy (based on representation), levels of endemism and, importantly, existing and potential threats, the Gulf St Vincent and Murat bioregions are the highest priority areas for the establishment of Marine Protected Areas. The Coorong Bioregion, which is the subject of the proposed marine park 18, was considered a ‘low’ priority and the Otway Bioregion, the region of the proposed marine park 19 was considered a ‘moderate’ priority.
Information on the threats to marine biodiversity in the South-east of South Australia comes from a number of sources including:
• Documentation in the various reports relating to the issue of the national representative system of marine protected areas, including Baker (2004), and Edyvane (1999)
7 Edyvane, K. (1999) Conserving marine biodiversity in South Australia, Technical Report 38, SA Research and Development Institute (SARDI) and Primary Industry and Resources, SA (PIRSA)
Baker, J. L. (2004) Towards a System of Ecologically Representative Marine Protected Areas in South Australian Marine Bioregions. Technical Report. Prepared for Coast and Marine Conservation Branch, Department for Environment and Heritage, South Australia
• State and Federal lists, under the relevant environment protection legislation, of endangered or threatened species
• Identification of the areas of high conservation vale (i.e. conservation ‘hotspots’) in the supporting DEH documentation for the marine park process. Ten such ‘hotspots’ have been identified in the South-east, which are Blackfellows Caves/Nene Valley, Blanche Bay/Cape Northumberland, Eight Mile Creek/Brown Bay/Green Point (and offshore reefs), Ellards Creek/Piccaninnie Ponds, Cape Banks/Canunda, Lacepede Bay/Cape Jaffa/Margaret Brock Reef, Guichen Bay/Baudin Rocks/Cape Dombey/Little Dip, Nora Creina Bay, Penguin Island/Cape Martin/Beachport and Coorong.
• Current information from local fishers who are familiar with the area.
Assessing these various information sources resulted in the identification of ecosystems/biota at risk and the threats to marine biodiversity and marine habitats in the South-east of South Australia. We therefore conclude:
• Significant threats to the marine biodiversity and the marine environment in the South-east are (a) agricultural run-off, including from drains, generally impacting the inshore marine ecosystem throughout the region (b) reduced water volumes and quality threatening water birds and migratory waders, particularly in the Coorong.
• Other threats, of a lesser significance, that were identified include the occasional disturbance of sea lion haul-out sites at Penguin Island/Beachport and also at Baudin Rocks and disturbance of migratory wading bird and penguin breeding sites in other areas of the South-east, aside from the Coorong.
• The proposed marine parks in the region will only marginally and incidentally address some of the identified threats because (a) they are a blunt instrument whereas appropriate response to the threats needs targeted and effective action and (b) the significant threats identified are often in areas that are not included within the proposed marine parks. The proposed parks do not therefore represent considered and cost-effective action.
• Many other potential issues are not threats to marine biodiversity or the marine environment because they are already managed effectively under other legislation. In particular, and in accordance with previous environmental assessments, the major rock lobster industry of the South-East region is considered, at worst, a minor or negligible threat to marine biodiversity and marine habitats because the industry is already effectively and sustainably managed. However, there are issues that need refinement and these include (a) the entrapment threat, although minor, to sea lions in pots (b) the threat, although minor, to turtles and whales of entanglement in ropes and (c) complete implementation of previous recommendations by the Commonwealth (DEWHA) to install escape gaps in pots to allow escapement of finfish and undersized lobster.
• More general threats to marine biodiversity and marine habitat, for example such as illegal fishing, pollution, climate change and introduced marine pests, will not be effectively addressed if at all by simple spatial management such as the proposed marine parks.
• The Government’s marine park proposals do not include any process, or identify costs for collecting data to monitor the impacts of marine parks. Unless these data are collected there will be no way of knowing whether the proposed marine parks actually achieve their stated aims of protecting marine biodiversity and habitats.
• The need in South Australia including the South East, as in other places, is to identify areas of high conservation value, assess the effectiveness of current management arrangements in protecting these areas, properly identify the threats to the marine environment and its biodiversity and then to address those threats through an appropriate risk-based management response. The management response, to be targeted and effective should be able to utilise all of the available management tools (including existing legislation and regulations). It may or may not include the need for additional measures such as ‘no-take’ areas. In any case, it is not considered good governance to take action, such as declaring ‘no-take’ fishing zones until all threats in that zone have been assessed as part of a risk-based approach and managed appropriately, taking into account the magnitude of the threat (management must not be disproportionate to the magnitude of the threat; Commonwealth of Australia 1992). Even then for cost-effectiveness any fishing closure must be on a gear-type by gear-type basis and not simply blanket bans regardless of which form of fishing might be causing an impact.
In summary, there is inadequate evidence to show how the proposed Marine Parks 18 and 19 in the South East will contribute substantially to protecting and conserving marine biodiversity and marine habitats. It is likely that there will be few quantifiable conservation benefits from their creation but considerable and as yet undisclosed costs.
