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From: wade doak
_: 5
Date: 31-08-10
Time: 15:49
As you say, the Minister's decision HAS affected recreational fishers in Akaroa. If the Minister is guided by any science, it should be clear that Marine Protected Areas have a long history of benefitting fishing. On this site David Clarkson has put out a masterly summary of some of that published scientific evidence.
From what I have been able to learn, fishing in Akaroa is very poor. I am old enough to have dived at Goat Island before it was a M.R.-late fifties. Even the red moki were tiny and I never saw a snapper.
Now school kids from north of Kaitaia and south of Tauranga are being bussed up to Goat Island Marine Reserve to see a viable community of fishes as part of their education. How do the poor kids of Christchurch fare, where I began diving in the mid-fifties and it took two years to actually see a fish?
Will the recreational fishers and iwi of Akaroa eventually become habituated to low grade fishing opportunities, unaware as to how good it really should be? Up here in Northland fishers no longer realise that really big snapper were once common in mangroves where their superior dentition gives them a feeding advantage. Hapuku were once caught from the coast. I have an old account of catching hapuku within Otago Harbour!
This forgetfulness and acceptance of the status quo is called the 'shifting baseline syndrome': people become accustomed to less and less in the sea. Only old timers can provide insights into how much has been lost. I will bet there are tales around Akaroa of the good old days when you did not need to leave the harbour to reap the bounty of the sea.
By the fifties, when I started diving there, it was already over the top. In those days few people had boats. We early divers soon found you had to go beyond the places you could reach by car to see abundant fish. But now...
I have not been able to keep up with the flood of scientific papers from overseas that endorse the value of marine protected areas to adjacent fisheries. Vince Kerr would have a great many of them. Oddly enough, as in rugby, N.Z . is looked to as a leader in this field. This may be largely due to the expertise passion and communicative ability of our Dr Bill Ballantine, who has made presentations to many overseas conferences and convinced them to take protective measures and set up reserves. Then the evidence of their value emerged and was published in reputable, refereed scientific journals. But here in N.Z., where initial progress was so inspiring to other countries and their best marine scientists, we have begun to drop the ball. The Minister's decision has implications for the whole world, who look up to us!
All this supporting scientific evidence can not be expected to trickle down to the average recreational fisher, who may think he/she is being deprived when ten percent of Akaroa Harbour is excluded from fishing. But Government is a rational process and meant to be guided by scientific knowledge. The Minister's department should be pro-active in getting across to the public the state of scientific knowledge about M.P.A.s. They do with pest control.
Like everything these days, recreational fishing has to be sustainable. There is no scientific conservation when the only restrictions are catch limits. That depends on an unpredictable catch effort factor of how many people decide to go fishing in any given area on any given day.
These days we hear so much about sustainable methods of farming, horticulture and viticulture. It has taken time for the value of organic farming to hit home. Some things are not immediately obvious, but require a thinking approach. Our successful husbandry of marine resources is lagging far behind efforts on land.
Wade Doak
Last changed: 23-Jul-2011