Who’s Counting

I heard some interesting news on Tuesday, I have included two recordings below one from radio 2ec and the next from ABC Southeast.

"Local divers team up with a leading environment
group to survey fish in our new marine park." 

I do admire the divers for there volunteer work, though I question the motives of the environment group involved.

More soon on the NPA, their methods, secret meetings and agenda. 

Click the play buttons to listen.
To save right click audio MP3 logo and choose Save Target As…

 

 2ec News - Coastkeepers Survey. [0:59m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (65)

 

 ABC Southeast Coastkeepers Survey [11:50m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (60)

It still seems that the whole marine park process in NSW has the cart before the horse. Surely it would be far better to have done a thorough survey prior to declaring the park, to understand what lives here and how it is coping after almost 200 years of European settlement and learn what may need protection, from what and then decide how best to go about it.

Listening to David Roe from Coastkeepers saying it's a good thing the survey is starting so soon after the marine park has come into effect, sounds crazy. Especially since one of the arguments used throughout the consultation process by the National Parks Association (NPA) Coastkeepers founders, to convince those that opposed the hasty declaration and lack of science for the park, was that fish stocks were in rapid decline and we had to act now.

Now they are saying that there is very little knowledge of where the fish live and in what numbers. Hearing both Bill Barker from the dive club and David Roe raised questions, like how many target fish are there? Bill said 52 more than once yet David and the website (link in logo below) say 50.

Also the methods used for counting, 1, 2-10, 10-20 and if a big school swims past it is recorded as 30 and up. The school may have 300 or more but it sounds like it will still get scored as 30+ fair bit of difference.

We are told that all the data will be available at a public website, though having looked at the site Here Most people will be all at sea unless you know your fish by scientific name. There would be more benefit to the public if the data was posted on the Coastkeepers website in a form that all can understand.

David refers to the surveys as science, I wonder if they have applied to the Marine Park Authority (MPA) for a permit to carry out scientific research. 

There are so many questions this article could go on and on but I will end with this.

Knowing that the NPA where happy to back the science used by the government to support the creation of the park, and the fact that there are serious questions being asked about that science. 

Why should the public believe that these surveys are anything more than an attempt to fool them into believing marine parks of this type work?  

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