Nugget Point Apr 2005

This letter was originally published in the Otago Daily Times 13 April 2005

IN the entranceway to Dunedin Public Library there is a map of the marine reserves around New Zealand's coast. It is a dramatic statement of just how little the South Island has in the way of marine protection, with just one marine reserve, off Banks Peninsula, along its entire east coast. Look at the broader picture like this and the creation of a second marine reserve on that coast seems not only sensible but desperately overdue.
   

This map prompted me to attend the meeting on April 8 organised by the Department of Conservation on Nugget Point, at which, I felt, Otago conservator Jeff Connell provided a cogent scientific argument for the next marine reserve to be created there. I was, however, also impressed by the depth of local knowledge afterwards displayed by a number of people in the audience who live and fish in the area, who mostly spoke against Doc's proposal. What none of them said, but what I think they and everyone else who was present feels, is that conservation of the marine environment is important. The debate is not over this, but over what reservation where.
   

It will be a great pity if the creation of a marine reserve at their doorstep, rather than somewhere else, alienates people to the extent that their contribution to the wider context of marine conservation is lost. The involvement of Fiordland fishers in the protection of more of the west coast of the South Island is an indication of the tremendous amount that fishers and locals on the east coast also have to offer.
   

The Otago conservator needs to listen hard to what they have to say, even if he feels constrained in how far he can accommodate their arguments in the proposal for Nugget Point. And I very much hope that the Nugget Point locals I heard, even if this particular decision does not go their way, will continue in long-term dialogue with Doc and others, to help promote the health of our marine environment as a whole.