Raewyn Peart: Oceans need a seachange

New Zealand has a strong maritime history, being settled by some of the greatest seafaring peoples in the world. Since then, we have not lost any of our passion for the sea. But are we taking the sea seriously enough?

Our country's oceans are vast, extending over an area 15 times larger than our dry land. They teem with life and the ocean floors contain extensive deposits of hydrocarbons and minerals.

But are we losing the oceans' potential before we have discovered it? It is estimated that only 15 per cent of New Zealand's marine species have been described. Less than one two-millionth of our sea floor has been rigorously scientifically sampled.

Yet petroleum and mineral permits have been granted over more than 100,000sq km of sea floor, an area greater than the North Island.

Thousands of kilometres of sea floor are being trawled each year by fishing vessels, a practice which has been compared to the clear-cutting of indigenous forest, because of the significant changes in habitat which can occur.

New marine species are arriving here at a rapid rate, many hitching a ride on oceangoing vessels. They are out-competing our native fauna and flora as well as threatening our growing aquaculture.

And some of our indigenous marine species are not faring at all well. One of the most threatened is the smallest dolphin in the world, the Maui's dolphin, of which fewer than 100 survive. It is not being endangered by foreign invaders, however, but by our own fishing nets.

Closer to shore, our harbours and estuaries are filling up with sediment around 10 times the natural rate, smothering life, reducing water clarity and degrading fish nursery grounds.

Unfortunately, the management of our ocean bounty has been sadly lacking in key areas. For the vast bulk of our oceans, located outside the 12 nautical mile territorial sea, there is little environmental regulation. There are also no marine reserves in this area.

Little urgency has been given to managing the significant effects of wide-scale fishing, even though scientists have long expressed concern about the destructive impacts of such activity.

We do not yet have a marine biosecurity strategy. This critical gap was highlighted by recent reports on the discovery of invasive marine species in the Viaduct Basin and Westhaven, and the lack of a credible response by management agencies.

And, to our shame, the organisms were accidentally discovered by visiting scientists, not by any local monitoring.

So why have we "missed the boat" on ocean management? After all, we were once world leaders, declaring the first no-take marine reserve in the 1970s, being one of the first to successfully establish the individual transferable quota system for fisheries in 1980s, and creating integrated management bodies for catchments and coastal waters in the form of regional councils.

The answer is that we have become complacent. Our oceans are large and largely out of sight. We don't really know what is happening out there and what the impacts are. What little information is available is kept well away from the public eye, buried in scientific and technical reports.

This is not good enough. Our oceans already support a significant proportion of our economy through marine tourism, fishing, aquaculture, mining, shipping, biotechnology and coastal development. If managed wisely, they will continue to support much more.

An indicator of this is the recent growth in marine tourism. Last year more than 650,000 international tourists visited our beaches and more than 100,000 viewed penguin and seal colonies or dolphins.

It is time for a seachange in the way we care for our oceans. In 2000, the Government began an initiative to develop a national oceans policy, but this was put on hold while the foreshore and seabed ownership issue was resolved. The oceans initiative urgently needs to be revived.

* Raewyn Peart is a senior policy analyst for the Environmental Defence Society and author of Looking Out to Sea: New Zealand as a model for ocean governance. These issues will be explored at the EDS conference Seachange 05 in Auckland on November 21-22.