Keep Australia Fishing needs your help

Back by the Pew and other well-financed environmental organisations, the collective anti-recreational fishing lobby reacted to the Government's marine park plans by was pushing hard to have those overturned and replaced with the Greens-Burke Plan. This was the situation leading up to the close of submissions on Wednesday September 20, 2017, on the Marine Park Draft.

Major environmental groups were keen to see recreational fishers locked out of over 1.3 million square kilometres of our seas, The Australian Recreational Fishing Foundation (ARFF) said, trumpeting a call to arms on this important matter and urging boaters and fishers to also have their say before the above cut-off date.

While ARFF says the Government's proposed plans aren't perfect, they make the point that they do maintain access to the majority of our iconic fishing spots, including remote Wreck Reef, 450km off Gladstone, and many other prized reefs in the Coral Sea, as well as the Perth Trench and Geographe Bay in WA.

ARFF said the Marine Park Draft Management Plans (as we reported it in detail here) were significantly better than the alternative, the Greens-Burke Plan, which would have had recreational fishers locked out of more than 1.3m sq km of our seas and set a precedence for future campaigns.

KEY POINTS ON MARINE PARK PLANS
- Compared to 2012, the draft plans, the new proposed plans:
>> Increase the number of ecological features covered by habitat protection zones that protect the sea floor from 192 to 265, an almost 40 per cent increase.
>> Increase from 60 per cent to 63 per cent the area under high-level green and yellow zone protection covering sites of ecological significance, including Coral Sea reefs and the Bremer Canyon.
>> Halve the economic impact on commercial fishers compared with 2012, a reduction from $8.2 million to $4.1 million a year, which is less than 0.3 per cent of total income generated by Australia’s wild catch fisheries.
>> Increase the total area of the reserves open to fishing from 64 per cent to 80 per cent.
>>The draft plans would make 97 per cent of waters within 100 kilometres of the coast open for recreational fishing and also enable a continued Australian tuna fishing industry based out of northern Queensland.

There is more on this issue at Keep Australia Fishing page.

LETTER TO THE MINISTER
Keep Australia Fishing formulated an e letter that read as follows:

You just need to fill out a few vacant panels and include some personal comment and you can have your say in no time on this critical matter of Marine Parks.

Keep up to date at the Keep Australia Fishing page and keep Australia fishing and boating. Some 75-80 per cent of all boaters say fishing is their primary reason to get afloat.