Great News! - new Marine Protected Area.

[Richard Mason]

OK, well great news for us, maybe you people won't get too excited....

As I may have mentioned before, there's an ongoing strategy in Tasmania of creating Marine Protected Areas, anyway, one of our favourite patches of coastline is up for inclusion in a draft new Bruny Island Bioregion MPA, with differing levels of protection for different areas. It's open for public comment, so a few of us will be writing to the RPDC to give support to the proposals

This is part of the area they are looking at:

Waterfall Bay


and the map of the areas concerned:



and the google earth view, to put it into some sort of perspective. (I live in Kingston, work in Sorell).



If you look at the photo, (Taken looking south from near Eaglehawk Neck/Pirates Bay), you'll see two big sea stacks, known as The Lanterns; they form the promontory poking out eastwards on the southern side of Fortescue Bay, as shown on the map.

This is one of our favourite areas, Fortescue for it's Macrocystis (Giant Kelp) Forest, Waterfall Bay for it's extensive cave systems, drop offs and sponge gardens, off in deeper (30-40M).

I'm really, really pleased about this.

Now alll they need to do is ignore, as far as possible, the bloody fishermen.

This is Cape Pillar



and this is Tasman Island, with Cape Pillar behind.

[Buoyant Babe]

Good luck! Fingers crossed for some good news

[David Pye]

Sounds good to me!

Though, personally, I'm a bit critical of the 'double standards' marine reserves, like the one at St Abbs and Eyemouth, where I as a diver am not allowed (well, it's voluntary, but try it and you'll get lynched!) to bring up crabs/lobsters, but the lobster-pot men aren't included, and are allowed to put out their pots etc as they wish.

I did question the local National Trust lady, and her argument was that as the fishermen were traditional, it was fine. I'm sure the lobsters are greatly heartened by that!

[Richard Mason]

Originally Posted by David Pye

Sounds good to me!

Though, personally, I'm a bit critical of the 'double standards' marine reserves, like the one at St Abbs and Eyemouth, where I as a diver am not allowed (well, it's voluntary, but try it and you'll get lynched!) to bring up crabs/lobsters, but the lobster-pot men aren't included, and are allowed to put out their pots etc as they wish.

I did question the local National Trust lady, and her argument was that as the fishermen were traditional, it was fine. I'm sure the lobsters are greatly heartened by that!

Generally, if it's "No-Take" here, then it's No Take, with gear confiscated and fines imposed.

This MPA has several zones, so there'll be varying levels of permitted activities; the "very high" level of protection will be zero take; I'm not sure what the rest will be, as the full document is over 200 pages and it's pretty long winded.

I guess in the St Abbs example, there may be an argument that the lobster potting is sustainable, if it's controlled, whereas here, most amateurs have a pot too and those areas close inshore get a real hammering - it's actually unusual to see a sized cray in those areas now, whereas when I visit out of the way spots (not often, as they're out of the way), or previous MPAs, we find crays in much larger numbers and sizes.

[UELou]

Richard,

That is great news to hear. We are hoping to have Osprey Reef in the Coral Sea protected one day too.

[CotoChris]

Great news, will the diving be affected? The Cies Islands off Vigo Bay are now a marine reserve and divers are very limited where they can dive, If we want to dive off the islands you have to send a three letter page with site, name of divers, qualifications and insurance details- this is a day beofre. On the day you must meet the 'marine guards' on the island, they inspect the paperwork and let you go. Well, at least it's a reserve. I heard a great fact yesterday. Estonia with 300 miles of coastland has ten times the area of marine reserves than the whole of UK! A despicable fact (they should 100 times more! )