Let's be fair to the Great Barrier Reef's fisheries-dependent families, too

Governments have written much good environmental policy and most industry people have recognised the benefits of being green. The commercial fishing industry is a prime example of the latter, with its adoption of turtle exclusion devices and industry-led environmental management systems. It is recognised worldwide as a leader in environmental initiatives.

But a serious new challenge for this, and many other industries, has arisen. How do we treat the small businesses which want to be green? Not that well, if the Great Barrier Reef fisheries are an example.

Queensland fishers face the prospect of losing up to 30 per cent of their fishing grounds. When people are forced to give up rights, income and jobs for a conservation objective, presumably to benefit the entire community, they deserve compensation.

We are not talking about multibillion-dollar enterprises here, rather small family concerns - men and women who work very hard in a dangerous profession for less than the average public servant's pay.

Proposed fishing bans will hurt these families. We know from work overseas that the impact of such bans on fishing families is profound.

When the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA), the Commonwealth body responsible for the multiple-use marine park, decided that for biodiversity protection reasons much more of the marine park should be off-limits for fishing, it tended to believe, and hence tell politicians, that there would be no loss to fishers.

The argument was that even though the same number of fishers would be pushed into a much smaller area, the fish population inside this area would grow and replenish the outside areas.

The nation's most eminent marine scientists, researching through the Reef Co-operative Research Centre, are still struggling to find consensus on this and other marine park matters.

Our study shows (pdf, 644Kb) that the loss to commercial fishers will be high - at $23 million a year to wild-capture fishers (targeting prawns, sweetlip, coral trout, Moreton Bay bugs, and so on) and $15 million a year to the prawn farming industry. These sums do not take into account impacts on businesses associated with recreational fishing, including charter fishing businesses.

Also, losses to business associated with the commercial fishing sector, such as boat repairers, seafood restaurants and the tourism industry were not considered - an economic rule of thumb suggests consideration of the impacts on these businesses will double our "at the beach" values.

There is a clear link between tourism and locally caught seafood. We need to keep in mind that the tourist city of Cairns has the highest per-capita seafood consumption in the country. "Throwing a shrimp on the barbie" is still a uniquely Australian tourist experience.

There are many precedents for paying compensation in circumstances similar to this one. Before the Wet Tropics (Daintree rainforests) became a World Heritage area, $73 million was made available to timber-getters, sawmill operators and workers who were stopped from taking timber.

When timber-getting was closed down for environmental reasons on Fraser Island, compensation of $37 million was provided. Commercial fishers should not be discriminated against because their activities occur on water rather than land.

Personally, we feel sad that the GBRMPA has taken to denying fishers their rights and in doing so attacking the credibility of our research. There have been public statements that our research is "unbalanced" because it has been "directed by the Queensland Seafood Industry Association".

What we find ironic is that one of us has been paid for more than two decades to provide most of GBRMPA's economic research. Using their logic, presumably GBRMPA, which has published this past work with pride, must think that it too was unbalanced. We are pleased, though, that a public apology for this slight on our professional ethics has been issued by GBRMPA.

But it does not stop there. We are disappointed to read a statement by Australian Democrats leader Andrew Bartlett that our research is "a slap-up job" which is flawed and inaccurate. Had he read the report in full the very "flaws" he believes he has found are dealt with in detail.

It is a sad day when poorly informed politicians attack the ethics and professionalism of researchers, particularly those from a party who, in their own words, champion the cause of academic freedom.

Finally, there is the question of the new zoning maps. GBRMPA is now stating it has changed the no-fishing areas and placed them where fishing does not occur. We wonder why, if it was this simple, it was not done right in the first place. These new maps have been put together by GBRMPA behind closed doors - an approach to natural resource management as outdated as the hula-hoop.

The reason the seafood industry had to go to a university to undertake this economic assessment was that GBRMPA, having commissioned economic research to complement its new zoning, has - for reasons that are not at all clear - not released that research.

The bottom line is that a few hundred family businesses and the communities that depend upon them deserve better treatment than they are receiving, and that means a fair compensation and adjustment package.