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Sea Change: Tim Winton’s view from the deep

By Max Rheese - posted Monday, 30 April 2012


It would be far more environmentally beneficial for Australian fishermen to be allowed to catch the maximum sustainable yield in the Coral Sea and the Pew Foundation to campaign for PNG to reduce their catch to sustainable levels.

Further restrictions on Australian fisheries harvest will only add to the existing environmental impacts that campaigners bemoan.

Seafood harvesting is the most environmentally friendly form of food production with none of the impacts of terrestrial livestock or cropping production.  For this reason alone we should be encouraging sustainable harvesting of seafood from regulated waters and there are none more regulated than Australian marine waters. 

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“It’s not a matter of fisheries management; it’s about the preservation of ecosystems.” Surely Winton meant conservation of ecosystems, not preservation? Conservation means embracing the World Conservation Union (IUCN) 'wise-use' of natural resources; preservation means ‘hands off’.  The world’s hungry and poor may not be too keen on a ‘hands off’ policy with regards to a protein rich renewable natural resource with low environmental impact, particularly when that ‘hands off’[no-take] policy places greater pressure on their own food supply.

Is this nit-picking on Winton’s words? Did he write what he meant? He is after all a professional wordsmith, so one assumes he chose his words carefully.  

This is the problem with advocating for environmental protection, someone might believe what you meant or you thought you meant. Apart from that, it is all about fisheries management.

Australian commercial fishing has nearly been managed into extinction despite one of the largest and most productive fisheries in the world. The number of fishing boats operating out of Cairns alone has dropped from over 500 in the 1970’s to a few dozen.

Winton’s view is single dimensional. He fails to mention the need to manage sustainably to feed a growing global population, fails to mention any food not produced by fishing must come from the land and come with a greater environmental impact, and fails to mention the environmental effect Australian consumers have on overseas fisheries.

Every resource we lock up puts more pressure on others and makes balance more difficult. An unnecessary restriction in one place becomes an increased impact somewhere else. This is the consequence of what he and others are advocating by seeking further unwarranted regulation on the most regulated fishery in the world.

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It is a parochial view that ignores the impacts on the global marine environment and the pressing need to produce food more efficiently with less environmental impact.

Instead of adopting the no compromise position of imposing a ‘no-take’ zone over a million square kilometres of ocean, thereby denying forever Australian and world access to a renewable food source, we could consider the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation’s vision for fisheries utilisation “A world in which responsible and sustainable use of fisheries and aquaculture resources makes an appreciable contribution to human well-being, food security and poverty alleviation.”

We do after all have the most regulated fisheries in the world; it should not be beyond the wit of the Australian Fisheries Management Authority to manage it sustainably without it being locked up.

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Article edited by Jo Coghlan.
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About the Author

Max Rheese is the Executive Director of the Australian Environment Foundation.

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