Aust ‘better’ at saving marine life
A marine biologist desperate to change New Zealand’s attitude towards the environment has hit Kiwis where it hurts, claiming Aussies are way better at looking after their seas.
Rob Davidson said New Zealand’s marine protection efforts looked ‘‘pretty lame’’ compared with Australia.
Davidson conceded he was trying to ‘‘embarrass’’ people into action as previous attempts had fallen on deaf ears.
‘‘Are Australians smarter than us, or can we learn?’’ he asked a regional environment committee last week.
His presentation identified six new ecologically significant marine sites on Marlborough’s coastline, and tracked conditions in some of the existing 130-odd sites.
For the fourth year in a row, Davidson and his team monitored and surveyed coastal sites, cofunded by the Marlborough District Council and the Department of Conservation.
‘‘The most important thing is that we’ve got significant areas that are extremely rare and extremely sensitive and vulnerable to damage,’’ he said. The report identified that human use of the region was high, including habitats damaged by recreational boat anchors. ‘‘It’s really interesting, we have this overinflated opinion of ourselves as Kiwis that we’re environmentally wonderful in the sea, but this couldn’t be further from the truth, we’re actually abysmal. ‘‘Compared with European countries, where the populations are massive and the controls on the environment and people are very thorough ... they’ve had to do that, otherwise they would pollute themselves to death, literally.
‘‘We just get away with it because there’s so few of us.
‘‘We need to get out of that little bubble of thinking we’re wonderful, and realise that we’re not. We have to do something about protecting these significant sites. We have more to gain than we do to lose by protecting them; to put it bluntly, protect the habitat [and] you end up with more fish.’’ Davidson said Australia had a ‘‘whole suite’’ of marine protections available, which provided different levels of management. ‘‘They range from total sanctuaries where everything is protected, to habitat protection where you can still go fishing ... habitat protections, species specific sanctuaries, zones for iconic or rare species, nursery areas ...’’ This was the fundamental difference between the two countries, he said.
‘‘It’s very black and white here. We have absolute marine protection or virtually no rules.
‘‘We’ve got significant sites, they are definitely the remnants and the best bits we have left; if we do nothing we’ll lose them or they’ll be degraded further.’’