Sea Change: Tim Winton’s view from the deep

None of this applicable to the Coral Sea. Declaring a marine park in the Coral Sea will not prevent adverse impacts happening elsewhere in the globe. Far better to campaign where the real impacts are being felt.

Winton confuses local scarcity with abundance in general: “In the 90s I got used to diving longer and deeper to find abalone where, not long before, getting my quota had been easy work. Prize species of fish became locally scarce, and all around me boats got bigger as recreational fishers ventured further and further out to sea to catch a feed. You didn’t need to be any sort of boffin to know something was wrong; every time you donned a mask and fins the evidence was right in front of your face: there it was - more and more of less.”

It is hardly surprising that popular coastal fishing spots with many decades of locally intense fishing will have less abundance than previously, this however does not equate to a national paucity of fish stocks. Australian commercial fisherman can fill their annual quotas in just several trips per year with one of the best harvesting rates per unit of effort in the world. The data supporting this assertion dramatically undermines the furphy of low productivity Australian waters promulgated by green group campaigns.

“There will however be commercial casualties in this process and it’s vital that affected fishing operators are bought out on just terms with dignity.” This seemingly benign and well-meaning statement glosses over fundamental environmental and economic realities.  The same statement has been used to close off most of the native forestry industry, another vital primary industry strangled by ‘green tape’.

Australian forestry management is recognised as world’s best practice and supplies products society demands, but has been over the last four decades incrementally denied access to over 90% of Australian forests and cannot supply domestic demand.

Australian consumers ‘plunder’ the exploited fisheries that Winton alludes to as the Australian fishing industry cannot provide a meaningful catch because of the restrictions that Winton urges Tony Burke to impose. The same is already occurring with timber; despite one of the world’s largest and best managed forest resources we have a $2.3 billion deficit per annum in timber products and increase the pressure on clear-felling of Asian rainforests to meet our needs.

Australian government fisheries managers state they implement the ‘best’ fisheries management in the world, again for a resource that society demands. Yet Winton and others say we should use taxpayer funds to close these activities, extinguish jobs in regional areas and then impose extra environmental demands for these natural resources on overseas jurisdictions that do not require the environmental standards demanded in Australia. This argument cannot be supported environmentally, economically or on a moral basis.

Winton’s love for the sea and the desire to protect it is admirable, but his efforts would be even more admirable if they were evidential. Furthermore, his efforts would produce the environmental outcome he seeks with a more holistic view.

Global marine protection needs to be holistic by the very nature of global oceans and many migratory species.

Winton should advocate for increased harvesting of Australian seafood, within sustainable limits, that is currently conducted under strict conditions to protect the global marine environment.  To ignore Australian consumers increasing impact on overseas fisheries while campaigning for vast increases in Australian marine protected areas is environmentally counter-productive.

Australia’s $1.7 billion seafood import bill is a result of incremental application of ‘green tape’ from previous environmental campaigns and restriction on the commercial fishing industry over the last four decades with continued decline in harvest. All of our imports come from fisheries with minimal or non-existent protection, much more heavily exploited than Australia’s. Also, the CSIRO forecasts our seafood consumption will increase by 400 per cent in the next 15 years and this can only be met by those exploited fisheries.

Over recent years about 70 per cent of the seafood consumed in Australia is imported. Thailand supplies 25 per cent of our imports from an EEZ that is 5 per cent the size of Australia’s from a wild caught catch that is 11 times greater than the total Australian catch. Australian fishermen annually harvest much less than 1000 tonnes of yellowfin tuna from the Coral Sea while in the adjoining waters PNG licenses Asian fishermen to harvest 750,000 tonnes of which we then import $165 million as canned tuna. We protect our fish for Asian fishermen to catch and sell back to us.