From Dolphins to Dory
Our Oceans Need Sanctuaries
Welcome to this special edition of the NPA~Marine Journal.
Our authors have travelled from Sydney Harbour to Hawaii and Costa Rica. But despite the geographic distances, they share a common theme: The need to protect and conserve our natural marine environment.
NPA~Marine is striving to establish a system of no-take marine sanctuaries that encompass at least 20% of each marine habitat in NSW waters.
No-take sanctuaries are zones that the public can enjoy and in which marine life can thrive, free from harmful activities. No-take sanctuaries improve habitats, increase biodiversity, reduce species extinction, recover depleted fish stocks and create a more sustainable fishing industry.
Though scientists have been stressing the importance of fully protecting 20-50% of marine waters in this way for years, only less than 3% of NSW marine waters are protected.
NPA~Marine has already persuaded the NSW Government to improve their educational material about sanctuary areas, and we are working with people all along the NSW coast to discover which areas should become sanctuary zones.
You too can become involved. Join our growing list of NPA~Marine supporters and stay up to date with the latest information on marine matters in NSW, NPA~Marine events and ways to make a difference.
It is important that we spread the word about the need for no-take sanctuaries in NSW and a better future for our oceans.
Cheers, Michael Vyse NPA~Marine Executive Member and HarbourKeepers Assistant Coorindator
The Power of Images
Valerie Taylor NPA~Marine Patron
In March 1990 my husband Ron and I returned to Coco Island, four hundred miles into the Pacific Ocean off Costa Rica. With its clear waters and incredible life Coco was becoming a mecca for divers. However, it was also on the brink of terrible devastation.
We had been diving at Coco a year before, but in just 12 months the change in the numbers of marine animals was appalling. Our skipper, Doc White, said that fishermen long lining the sharks for their fins along with sports fishermen were responsible for the rapid decrease in shark and fish numbers.
That evening a storm blew up and several of the long liners pulled into the shelter of a small bay. Their rigging was festooned with hundreds of drying shark fins, while hundreds more lay on the decks. I felt something should be done to stop the slaughter before it was too late.
Doc said no one he knew of had ever tried to photograph the finning trawlers. I decided I wanted that one picture. When the fishing boats were in complete darkness I had a crew member row me to the nearest trawler.
In darkness I dragged myself and my camera gear over the gunwale, struggled silently around the ropes and fins littering the deck and climbed very slowly onto the cabin roof. I started taking pictures of the fins strung along the rigging when I tripped on a rope and dropped the flash.
The noise was horrific. In seconds the lights came on and little men in baggy shorts came swarming onto the deck. I was surrounded. I may have been terrified but they were astounded by the sight of an Australian woman with long blond hair proclaiming ”Australie! Australie! Scientist! Scientist!”. The men just stared in silence as I clambered from the roof, scrambled into the dory and very quickly rowed away.
On the trip back to port I wrote a letter to the Costa Rican Minister for the Environment. Back in Australia I wrote to the Costa Rican National Parks Director and enclosed copies of my photographs.
Costa Rica¹s government had been trying for years to police illegal fishing around Coco Island but the problem was constantly put on a back burner.; that is until my images arrived in the country. They appeared everywhere; in magazines, newspapers and on TV. The Costa Rican people, so proud of their reputation as the most conservation minded country in the world caused their governments lack of action to become an embarrassment, forcing it to react strongly and swiftly.
Today, national parks officers stationed on the island police the surrounding waters. Diving tourism has become an on-going source of income for Costa Rica.
The wildlife of Coco Island is returning. Schooling Hammerheads in their thousands patrol the deeper reefs. White Tip Sharks lie around in the hundred and the big schools of fish can at times blot out the sun.
It just goes to prove, a little effort and one picture can be worth a thousand words.
Reality Under the Sea
Jean-Michel Cousteau
My father, Jacques Cousteau, co-invented the scuba tank because of a simple desire—he wanted to dive deeper and stay longer. The result of his tinkering is clear—unprecedented numbers of us are now able to see for ourselves what is happening below that shining surface of the vast sea.
Because we seek out the underwater experience, we find ourselves face to face with many myths of the sea and quickly become self-educated about what is reality and what is fiction. That is perhaps the revolution of what sport diving can accomplish—we learn for ourselves. The next step in this educational revolution is greater action. Recent expeditions have convinced me that it is we divers who are in a unique position to take important action.
For example, my Ocean Futures Society crew and I spent a year researching our expedition to the Northwestern Hawaiian Islands. We read of pristine beaches and coral reefs untouched by human influence, radiating biodiversity. For six weeks, we dove all day and walked the beaches, much like the earliest Hawaiian explorers had done. Much of what we read was true.
But had we not come to see for ourselves, we would have missed the bigger story—that these islands are the only tiny masses of land that break the surface of the sea for thousands of miles across the Pacific gyre, a current that carries tons of debris from a multitude of cities around the Pacific.
To walk these remote beaches is to be ankle-deep in the trash of our daily lives — cigarette lighters, plastic toys, light bulbs,even a computer monitor.Under water, we found reefs covered in nets long torn from their boats, still casting a dangerous trap. It was a reality check we hadn’t expected.
I watched one of our divers, Holly Lohuis, free dive among an enormous school of Galapagos sharks, all longer than she. Holly was surrounded for hours in a scene of tremendous grace and beauty. It made me think about her courage and then to think again about her knowledge—Holly is a marine biologist and knows sharks both academically and from a lot of personal experience. The image of her in this school of sharks became for me a symbol of how diving and spending time at sea has made us smarter about the reality of things. Not all sharks are mindless predators, and, despite the abundance of sharks in this scene, it is also a myth that the sea is full of sharks. Most divers know that it is rare when we’re lucky enough to even see a shark from a distance. Some species, like the hammerhead, are hanging on, at only 10% of their original populations. Getting in the water oftenmeans discovering that things are not what they seem.
It has sometimes been divers who have made the early discoveries of changes that should alarm us, like the die-off of sea urchins in the Caribbean many years ago, and now, of coral bleaching. We all have a stake in the heath of the sea and our pleasure-seeking has brought with it new knowledge and some responsibility.
For new divers and those veterans who continue to love diving, there is an organisation that allows those of us who are not scientists to get involved and to make a contribution with a global reality check. Reef Check is an organisation and a protocol to train sport divers to record observations on the reef and to submit their findings to a central data base so that a picture can emerge of trends in the health of coral reefs worldwide. It is the ultimate reality check and gives getting back in the water a new meaning. I suggest every diver visit Reef Check at wwwreefcheck.org and see if their program might interest you.
Masks, flippers, weight belts, tanks, regulators—we don’t look like pioneers or scouts, but that’s exactly what we are and the more we learn, the more we’ll have to tell when we come back to the surface from this vast, but still vulnerable seascape.
Say 'Yes' to No Take Sanctuaries by David Ireland
Over 30 years of filming along the NSW coast for documentaries, television shows and multimedia productions, I have seen a huge decline in marine life. Only the formation of no-take sanctuaries has stoped the decline. In fact no-take sanctuary zones have been an absolute success.
For many years I have campaigned for the protection of numerous species of creatures, but governments have been slow to act. The result? The Grey Nurse Sharks are probably headed for extinction, wobbegong shark numbers are greatly depleted and many rock and coral reefs have only a fraction of the biodiversity that we filmed only 20 to 30 years ago.
These are the main reasons for the shocking decline in the health of our marine environment:
1. The total inability of governments to enforce their own laws to protect the marine environment.
2. The use of fine nets and set lines, which kill endangered aquatic species as by-catch every day.
3. The stripping of our exotic fish and corals by the aquarium industry.
4. The catching of juvenile fish on a grand scale.
5. And finally, I do not want to stop a man throwing a line in, but I have lost count of the times I have taken stainless steel hooks from marine animals because of the amateur fishing industry.
We now have some, but still too few, no-take sanctuaries. The result in these areas has been an amazing turnaround in the whole health of the local environment. Fish species have multiplied in the sanctuaries and the surrounding areas have shown a dramatic increase in fish stocks. Fish are allowed to reach maturity and breed. After 30 years, people like me are beginning to see reefs the way we did years ago, teeming with life.
I have devoted my life to filming animals and raising concerns about our environment. Hopefully my wildlife films on Channel Nine and Disney will reach many people and stimulate their passion to become active supporters of worthwhile projects like no-take marine sanctuaries.
One of the best ways to become involved is to join organisations like the NPA.
NPA~Marine and the no-take sanctuaries get my vote!
Sydney Harbour - The Reef in our Back Yard
Judy Reizes
Although it has only been a no-take aquatic reserve for just over two years, Cabbage Tree Bay, Manly, has constantly surprised and delighted the local community with an increase in the diversity and abundance of marine life.
The world’s ambassador for oceans, Sylvia Earle, was thrilled to be escorted on a recent dive by a couple of friendly Blue Gropers, encountering Weedy Seadragons and a giant Cuttlefish. Sydneysiders are so lucky to have these reefs in their backyard, which provide easy access from the shore to a marine wonderland of over 550 species.
In sharp contrast, Sydney Harbour’s only aquatic reserve, the North Harbour Aquatic Reserve (declared in 1982), still permits commercial hauling and recreational fishing in Spring Cove. Diver and Blue Groper
The Daily Telegraph recently reported “increasing dead zones caused by depletion of fish stocks”. Spring Cove is also critical habitat for the State’s only mainland breeding colony of Fairy Penguins.
Residents and visitors are being encouraged to “put their head under” and record their sightings of marine life on a soon-to-be-on-line Manly Marine Life Survey, the results of which will be collated and displayed on Manly’s Ocean Care Day in December.
