AUSTRALIA: Beautiful One Day
May 2002 - A 50 minute Documentary
Submarine man
It has been actually predicted that by the year 2030 that all the coral reefs in the world may actually be dead.
All over the world precious coral reefs… are disappearing.Oil exploration, coral bleaching, intensive fishing and degraded water are also closing in on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.At the same time, industries that affect the Reef are digging in and not giving an inch.
Ian Ballantyne
The reef is in very, very healthy condition. There is virtually no impact from agricultural means or from cane growing.
Greg Radley
If you’ve got an environmental damaging activity that’s so detrimental, after forty years of consistent fishing there shouldn’t be anything left here. It should be a marine desert down there.
A battle is brewing in the world’s largest marine park and it’s a battle over livelihoods, conservation and -most of all – whether the Reef really is at risk?
Titles:
“Beautiful one day…”
Reporter: Stephen McDonell
These tourists are going to see something absolutely unique: an unrivalled marvel under the sea.
It’s home to 400 types of coral, 1500 species of fish and 4,000 different molluscs.
Max Shepherd, Tourist Operator
Everyone around the world knows of the Great Barrier Reef. It’s basically seen as the world’s largest living thing and they almost see it as some sort of gauge of the health of the entire environment.
On this tour visitors are able to touch as well as look, under the supervision of a marine biologist.
Marine biologist
Can you all see we’ve got lots and lots of tiny bumps on each branch here? Now, when you pass this around, have a look at one individual bump and you’ll see a tiny hole inside and it’s inside that tiny hole that lives the one individual animal. So on here you’ve got perhaps one thousand individual animals growing together as a colony. OK so I’ll pass this around.
Coral is what the Marine Park is most famous for. It can be hard… or soft. The hard coral is made up of tube-like polyps embedded in a limestone skeleton. Over the years, they die, accumulate and are covered in the limestone that new corals and algae produce – this forms a reef. There are many reefs in the world but nothing on the scale of the Great Barrier Reef. Stretching 2,000 kilometres, building on itself, growing up and out, the modern reef is 8,000 years old, built on ancient reefs which took 100’s of thousands of years to form – maybe millions.
Tourists coming to see it in their hordes, bring hundreds of millions of dollars to Queensland every year.
Marine biologist
This one is called a… Sea Cucumber. I thought I’d bring this one up for you because it’s my favourite one. Once again, it has the same anatomy as the one I showed you before with the mouth… and the anus shooting up towards……..
Tourism inevitably causes pressure butEverything these tourists are shown by the biologist is put back. Compared to other industries, modern tourism has relatively low impact.
Max Shepherd
It’s critical that we have a low impact on the reef because, if we mess it up, we’re not going to have another opportunity.
And coral reefs are in deep trouble elsewhere. Human beings have turned them into underwater deserts.
This is a healthy reef.And here’s one in Jamaica where eighty per cent of corals have been destroyed in a decade.
Here’s a thriving segment of the Great Barrier Reef.And here’s what happens when nutrients from human activity get into the water: Algae takes off – completely strangling the coral. This is the United States, off the coast of Florida.
Global warming - causing coral bleaching - has destroyed reefs in Tahiti and the Seychelles.Human development has been disastrous for coral, over the last decade. According to the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, 10% of the world’s reefs were lost by 1992. 27% were lost by the year 2000 and it’s expected 40% will be gone by 2010.
Maybe because of its size, or distance from massive development, the Barrier Reef has, so far, escaped widespread destruction but the pressure is coming.
Sometimes it comes in large and immediate forms.
In November 2000 the Malaysian ship Bunga Teratai Satu ran aground onto the Barrier Reef off Cairns.
The container ship smashed through pristine coral and was stuck in the marine park for 12 days. It was feared the vessel could become a permanent fixture after many failed attempts to refloat it.
The ship was only freed when three coral outcrops were blasted to pry it loose. A huge cleanup followed, including the costly removal of toxic paint from the coral shelf.
Virginia Chadwick – Chair, Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority
On a risk analysis we can look forward to round about one grounding, one accident a year and, hence, again in terms of our view here that we mustn’t take any more risk than if needed, that we mustn’t take gambles.
The Barrier Reef sees more major shipping accidents than any other part of the Australian coast.There’ve been 40 collisions or groundings in the Reef area since 1985. In all, oil tankers and large cargo ships make 6000 trips through difficult reef waters every year.
Virginia Chadwick An oil spill is in, in some ways if you’re going to say what single incident could cause the greatest damage to the Great Barrier Reef it would be a major oil spill.
A shipping review conducted after the Satu crash has recommended specialist shipping pilots for the Northern Reef area.Some environmentalists want to ban all ships not directly using a Queensland port from entering the Park at all. David Kemp is the Australian Environment Minister.
David Kemp, Minister for Environment
Q- Can you give me one good reason why these tankers should be allowed to move through the Marine Park if they’re not heading for a Queensland port?
Well as I say the Australian shipping is part of world shipping and those are significant factors that have to be taken into account as well. The critical thing is that there is a regulatory regime in place, which protects the Reef against the dangers that may come from shipping practises, which simply don’t respect the World Heritage values of the Reef.
If thousands of large ships worry reef watchers - they are even more alarmed by billions of tiny particles beneath the surface.Dr David Williams from the Co-operative Research Centre for the Reef has dived on many coral reefs around the world.
Dr David Williams, Research Director, CRC (Reef)
There are many examples in South East Asia where the population pressure on the land and particularly cutting down trees and so on has led to sedimentation and run-off of nutrients that’ve had major impacts on the reefs. Often those cases are compounded by over-fishing and by issues of sewerage and so on as well.
Q- And how severe have these impacts been?
Oh in some of these cases they’ve virtually killed the reefs.
Coral thrives in low-nutrient water. When nutrients are added, in the form of sewerage and, especially, fertiliser they totally change the balance of species.Algae, feeding on nutrients, spreads rapidly and corals can’t compete. It’s thought that sediment-covered surfaces are less suitable for juvenile corals and light needed by deeper corals is reduced by murky water.
Anecdotal evidence from divers suggests some Queensland reefs have already been buried by sediment
and footage taken this summer, off Cairns, seems to show mid-shelf reefs in the process of being smothered by nutrient-fuelled algae.
Susan Brown, Journalist
I grew up on the shores of the Barrier Reef. I used to go snorkelling, I used to look at the creatures and just wonder at, at the life there, at the, at the different species there. I go back there now as an adult – they’re coated in algae. The inner reef’s gone.
Coral faces natural threats – like an attack from Crown of Thorns Starfish – and has to regenerate afterwards.Nutrients, carried by sediment, hamper reproduction. Nutrient destruction may only be evident when a large area of coral fails to recover from natural losses.
Dr David Williams
Normally in crown of thorns, one can get a recovery of the shallow coral cover in 12 years time but the first signal, the first definite signal that run-off is having an effect on the reef, is likely to be when one of these reefs that has been impacted by something else, fails to recover. By then it’ll probably be too late to do anything about it.
Sedimentation occurs naturally off the coast but some scientists think three times more sediment flows out of Queensland Rivers than 150 years ago – carrying nitrogen, phosphorus and heavy metals.
The biggest contributor to man-made sediment is agriculture. To see where it starts, you have to leave the coast, travel across the cane fields and over the hills to cattle country.
Nat sot of Roger zipping around on his motorbike.Cattle grazing covers 75% of the Great Barrier Reef catchment. This is a high-flood area and, during the wet season, torrents of water naturally carry off soil. The run-off is increased when cattle have eaten-off ground cover and cut up riverbanks.
Yet there are solutions.
Roger Landsberg’s property, Trafalgar Station, is 200 kilometres inland from the Reef.
Traditionally graziers here fatten up cattle on their best land: the thick grass next to the river. But if river grass is depleted more soil will run into the water and down to the reef. To stop this, Roger Landsberg is building up grass by resting it from grazing.
Roger Landsberg, Grazier
By having good grass cover like that and you know anything above fifty per cent ground cover or grass cover will just about um totally minimise any soil loss and so, by bearing that in mind, you can actually ah improve the water quality in the rivers and that in turn ah stops the sediment going to the Reef.
Roger Lansdberg fences-off what scientists call the riparian areas and graziers call creek flats. He also rests about 20% of his property each year.
Roger Landsberg
Roger Landsberg in the clear
We have to acknowledge that there is a problem and we have to acknowledge that there is sediment leaving our inland areas and going to the Barrier Reef Lagoon and you only have to drive over the bridge of a, of a river that’s in flood - or even not quite in flood - to see that.
Roger’s not your average grazier but his attitudes stand out even more from other primary producers.
Roger Landsberg
It’s not, not for me to um to throw criticism on you know on other, on other farmers but I was a bit disappointed. I was at a conference recently and all the other industries took a proactive approach, recognised that there is a problem and outlined their strategies to try and overcome that, whereas the cane growers basically denied there was a problem or criticised the science.
Cane growers are crucial because the barrier reef is closest to land precisely where cane is planted.It covers a much smaller area than cattle and its contribution to overall sedimentation is much less.But the sediment leaving cane fields, is much higher in nutrients. This run-off carries herbicides and nitrogen fertiliser.
Cane is grown by thousands of small landholders. In recent years they’ve battled drought, floods and a collapse in world sugar prices. The last thing they want now is to change practices in ways that might cost them money.
The Cane Growers Organisation – led by General Manager Ian Ballantyne – says no one can prove cane has any impact on the reef.
Ian Ballantyne
The evidence, not the assertion, not the expressions of concern – but the evidence is actually pointing just the other way. That the reef is in very, very healthy condition. There is virtually no impact from ah agricultural means or from cane growing.
Imogen Zethoven, GBR Campaign Manager, World Wide Fund for Nature
It's unfortunate that Canegrowers have decided to take a position of denial, to simply denying the reality of the problem, denying that the scientific consensus on this issue and that's unfortunate and we hope that at some point they will actually recognise that there's a problem.
The Cane Growers Organisation accuses its opponents of exaggerating the science.Magnetic Island is a forty-minutes by boat from Townsville. Here a team from James Cook University is doing research that’s been seized on by the Sugar Cane Lobby.
Physicist Peter Ridd and his senior colleagues Dr. Piers Larcombe and Dr. Bob Carter have been measuring if sedimentation in the ocean itself has increased over the years. The Cane Growers Organisation is delighted with the results.
Dr Peter Ridd, Physicist.
Over the last few thousand years there’s, a lot of these inshore reefs have always had very high sediment concentrations and um the extra amount of ah stability and suspended sediment concentrations coming down from the rivers is actually very small compared with what is here naturally, at least for the inshore reefs.
Q- So it’s a counter argument to those who would say that sediment is currently smothering the reef?
It certainly says that sediment is not smothering the reef.
However marine biologists say it’s not the volume of sediment hurting coral.
David Williams
The sediment is the dead material. What is missed in this discussion is that about half the nitrogen, 80% of the phosphorous and all the herbicides and heavy metals are attached to the sediment and the only way that gets out to reef is if the sediment gets out to the reef. So it’s true that clean sediment per say may not be having the effect that we believed 10 years ago, but what comes with it is quite likely to have an effect.
David Williams also feels the James Cook team is being exploited.
David Williams
I think they believe very much in the message they’re telling and mostly what they do say is very accurate science. I’m not sure that they appreciate altogether the broader implications of what they’re saying. So it’s not their area of expertise to, to tell that.
Q- So maybe they’re being a bit naive by letting themselves be used?
That was your suggestion?
Q- Is it something you agree with?
It’s possible.
Peter Ridd
(edit)I’m always very careful to say although we know that the, the ah the sediments are not smothering the reef, we know that there are other issues related to sediments say from nutrients carried on the sediments and I always try to say that almost in the next sentence.
Q- But the cane growers seem to leave that bit out though?
Well not necessarily I mean it depends on who…
Q- The Cane Growers Organisation?
Well possible yeah.
Ian Ballantyne
The sort of ah impact the cane fields are having ah is in terms of sediment movement ah is less ah than occurs out of a tropical rainforest, or a virgin rainforest.
Q- Do you really think that the water running off a cane farm would be less damaging to the reef than water from a tropical rainforest?
Yes.
Q- Why would you believe that?
Filtration systems. I mean, basically sugar cane is like a large set of kidneys.
Q- So how can there be more nitrate coming out of a tropical rainforest than a cane farm?
Because the natural occurrence of those nitrates in those areas.
In a later e-mail, Mr Ballantyne’s Organisation admitted that nitrogen loss from cane is “generally believed to exceed what would be normally lost from a rainforest system.”
One member of the Cane Growers Organisation says there is a problem with his industry.Farmer Ross Digman has seen the adverse impact of cane farming on his local waterways. He says run off from cane fields kills fish.Rather than wait for science to confirm what he already knows, he has rebuilt several wetlands. They catch silt and provide habitat for fish, birds, even crocodiles.
Ross Digman Cane farmer
Basically, I’m a recreational fisherman and I was concerned the effect my own drains were having on the wetlands in the area and I thought I’d try to make a wetland to compensate for that to some extent.
Ross Digman
I’m told that phosphates for instance are only transported off farm and perhaps to the Barrier Reef Lagoon, attached to soil particles. So if we can trap soil particles, we’re reducing the possible off-farm impact of farming and this lagoon is – along with the others I’ve built are on my main drainage line and they act as major silt traps.
Tom Watters is another innovative cane farmers who’s built silt traps and replanted his riverbanks.
Once cane burning left bare fields open to flooding rain. Like many others Tom phased out burning in the 1980s.
These days, he leaves discarded plant matter on the ground in what’s called a Green Cane Trash Blanket.
Tom and Stephen
So this is it here is it?
Yeah this is the Green Cane Trash Blanket: the residue that’s left from harvesting last year.
And how does this effect run-off?
The rain doesn’t belt into the soil and the soil’s firm underneath it and the water trickles through the trash and leaves everything very stable.
Tom in the car
Q- Do you think people have been a little harsh on cane growers - or to what degree have they been - in terms of the criticisms that you’ve heard?
Yeah, I think they have been telling us we’re all the bad guys. I’m pretty sure that’s not quite correct because we’re only one player in the field and the catchment of the streams goes a lot further back than the cane fields.
But most cane farmers still till around 30% of their properties every year. Once the rain hits the tilled soil, sediment still gushes out of paddocks.
Ross Digman
Q- What do you think of the attitude generally of the cane industry towards the impact of cane growing on the environment?
Well we’re, we’re definitely having more impact than the industry would, well admits I think. That’s probably the best way I can say it.
Ross Digman wants his industry to fund a small environmental levy, once the world sugar price recovers.The money raised would be used to fund the mass rehabilitation of waterways. Instead he expects the cane industry will spend more than this on publicity hoping to convince the community that the industry is not environmentally harmful.
Another group of small operators are desperately trying to prove they don’t damage the marine park.
Greg Radley and his deck hand Rob Colinin operate a prawn trawler out of Townsville. They fish sections of the Park between land and reef.
Greg Radley, Commercial Fisherman
When I was growing up my father always said to me never ever argue with your friends about religion and politics. He should have said fishing as well because people have the same sort of you know passion about their fishing as what they do about their political and religious beliefs. It’s an incredibly emotional topic.
His dad could fish year round but new regulations restrict Greg to 118 days a year.
Trawling is not controlled for its effect on coral but for what it does to other sea creatures.
Trawlers drag their nets along the ocean bottom, even digging into the sea floor for prawns. Nets grab everything in their path. Its described as the underwater version of clear felling.
Greg Radley
The areas that we trawl we’ve been traditionally trawling these areas for forty years. Now if you’ve got an environmental ah damaging activity that’s so detrimental, after forty years of consistent fishing there shouldn’t be anything left here. Should be a marine desert down there and you guys see tonight when we wench up that it’s far from it. There is just an enormous, an enormous amount of seafood and other you know and other marine animals that are still present in the areas that are heavily trawled. We’re fishing in a heavily trawled area right now.
Though they’re only allowed to keep prawns, Greg and Rob drag up all manner of undersea life. The so-called by-catch has to be thrown back, alive or dead.
Greg Radley
Q- Do you think though that it’s a privilege really for fishermen to be working inside a Marine Park?
Fishermen were here long before it was declared a marine park. I think it’s a privilege that we provide the community with a, with a quality of seafood that’s world class.
Last year at Mission Beach, south of Cairns, trawler men and local residents clashed over prawn trawling.
When trawlers discard their by-catch, it’s largely dead. Last March, a fish kill washed up on Mission Beach, with disastrous consequences for the fishing industry.
Peter Heyward
The size of that slick of dead fish was probably 4 – about 4 kilometres long, 800 metres wide and up to 40 fish per square metre in the densest sections within that, and that was sort of a fairly massive you know result of a little bit of trawling going on and I think that sort of sparked everybody into having to do something about it.
Peter Heywood is a real estate agent in this sleepy town. He has plans to build a marina here.He’s also the chairman of the local marine advisory committee: one of many along the coast which help the Authority manage the Park.
Peter Heyward, Mission Beach Real Estate Agent
Mission Beach depends a fair amount on – not a fair amount, tourism is our only real industry in the town.
When the fish kill washed up on Mission Beach, Peter Heywood’s local Committee suggested to the Marine Park Authority that trawling be banned along a 766 square kilometre strip.
The Authority agreed and so did the Australian Government. The trawl ban was announced. Before it could be finally signed off, commercial fishermen flew to Canberra and convinced the Australian Environment Minister, David Kemp, to review the decision. After three days of intense lobbying by the Authority and trawler men, the Minister almost halved the size of the no trawl zone.
Virginia Chadwick
Well nobody, nobody likes to think that your best advice hasn’t been good enough and in this, in this case I’d be the first to concede that we, we went in with what we thought was a good, a good proposal.
David Kemp
There was no evidence that was provided to me that I found at all persuasive that fishing beyond the boundaries that I finally determined would have any adverse impact on Mission Beach or its communities.
Commercial fishermen are about to face a much bigger test than Mission Beach. On the advice of the Marine Park Authority, the Government is looking to ban fishing from hundreds of pockets of the Park.The new programme, designed to protect special regions, is likely to provoke a large and bitter conflict in the coming months.
Greg Radley
Q- Can you see a day when commercial fishing will be banned in the Marine Park area?
I would ah you know I really hope not but I’ve got a son at home only a little guy. He’s not two years old yet and, um if he wants to be a fisherman, unfortunately I don’t think it’s going to be there for him. You know, my gut feeling is that we are basically dinosaurs that um the future is not bright for fishing in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
A coordinated national effort may save the reef from shipwrecks, sediment, and overfishing.But the biggest threat to the reef is global – coral bleaching caused by rising ocean temperature.
Semi-Submersible
It has been actually predicted that by the year 2030 that all the coral reefs in the world may actually be dead. This is actually due to global warming. [EDIT] If the oceans do get too warm the corals go into heat stress and the little zozantheli that live inside the corals will actually leave the coral and the corals actually turn white when this happens. This is known as coral bleaching.
Coral bleaching is hugely destructive.Coral is made up of a plant part and an animal part. The animal part is the multi-tentacled polyp. It, in turn, is covered in plants: single celled algae called zooxanthellae. Using photosynthesis the zooxanthellae supply sugars and give the coral its colour. If the ocean heats up – due to global warming – the zooxanthellae produce too much oxygen, which starts to poison the animal part of coral. As a preservation response, the coral spits out the zooxanthellae but then loses its food supply, turns white, can die and even finally crumble away. The reef may never recover.This is Scott reef off the northwest Coast of Australia. It was devastated by coral bleaching in 1998.That year saw the biggest coral die off in modern times hitting reefs world wide including the barrier reef.
This year, it’s happening again. This footage was taken off Magnetic Island just last month.
Dr Terry Done, Marine Scientist, Aust. Institute of Marine Science
The Great Barrier Reef has got off pretty lightly, even this time.
But contrast this with ah the Indian Ocean ah, Western Indian Ocean, in 1998 - places like the Seychelles - where large areas, 90% of the corals down to 30 metres depth are dead following…
Q- Completely destroyed?
Completely destroyed, followed - ah following bleaching by a very large pool of hot water floating round in the Indian Ocean.
Terry Done studies global climate modelling and thinks this may just be a start. The yellow areas show water temperature increasing in the Indian Ocean in 1998 when huge areas of coral were destroyed.This year increases in water temperature can be found much closer to Queensland.
Controlling global warming needs international co-operation. When the world tried to place limits on greenhouse gas emissions in Kyoto Australia fought for and got an increase in its emissions. Also, along with the United States, the Australian Government will not even ratify the protocol. Now the country’s Greenhouse credentials are looking even more shaky.The target Australia got at Kyoto was only 8%.But leaked Government documents have predicted Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions will blowout to 33% above 1990 levels in the coming eight years.
David Kemp
We’ve put $1 billion into greenhouse gas emission reductions. We are probably leading the world in our approach to greenhouse gas emissions through the establishment of a body such as the Australian Greenhouse Office. We’ve indicated that we’ll be working to meet our Kyoto target - And I believe Australia is a very responsible international citizen in this regard …
If the largest single threat to the reef is a warming planet, there’s a certain irony that the latest controversy over reef protection is about the major contributor to greenhouse emissions – fossil fuel.
Over the past 17 years, at least five separate exploration teams have been allowed into the Marine Park, collecting data on the presence of oil: three even conducted drilling for rock samples.The Australian Government has funded much of this work and says it is purely scientific.
Susan Brown, Journalist
What they’re saying publicly is we’ve got this resource, the Barrier Reef and we would never, hand on our hearts, let anybody ever go in there and look for oil. But privately they’re saying ‘you can go in there with a great big tax-payer funded seismic ship and build up a data base of exactly the sort of information that the oil industry would need should they ever want to actually thoroughly exploit the resources in that area of the Coral Sea’.
Freelance journalist, Susan Brown, has studied boxes of Government documents on oil testing in and around the Great Barrier reef. She obtained them through Freedom of Information and also from the Australian Democrats, her former employers.This political party had successfully put up a Senate motion calling for the Government to provide all documents about oil drilling on the Reef.
Susan Brown
Well, I think ordinary Australians would be shocked because the language has been: ‘We won’t allow the oil industry in’; ‘The reef is protected for evermore’; ‘It’s a no-go zone for oil’ but secretly the government – at least certainly some parts of the government – have been allowing, encouraging, collecting and disseminating information which is of use to the oil industry.
Dr David Kemp
I don’t believe that any government department would’ve provided information to oil companies with the thought that oil drilling on the Reef might be permitted. Oil drilling on the Reef is absolutely banned. It has been since 1975 and that isn’t going to be changed.
The documents show cooperation between the Australian Government and oil companies; extensive oil industry interest in any oil deposits under the reef and great enthusiasm when indicators of oil have been found. The Townville Trough, 50 kilometres outside the reef, may contain 5 billion barrels: Australia’s biggest single reserve.
One of the documents also claims that the government’s own Bureau of Resource Sciences requested access to scientific research for“ use in re-assessing the undiscovered petroleum resources of the northeast Australian margin.”
This is especially sensitive because the Marine Park was set up in the first place in the 1970’s, under a law to protect the Barrier Reef from the threat of oil drilling.
Dr David Kemp
Q- If anyone was looking for oil in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park – just looking for it – would that be against the law?
Well it would be a totally pointless activity because no oil drilling is permitted within the Park.
Q- But would it be in breach of the Act to look for oil?
Well it would be because it’s not a scientific activity, which is there to help us manage the Reef in a better way.
Q- And haven’t then Government departments been skating close to the edge of the law by looking for information which might…?
Well look I haven’t seen any evidence of that.
Now a new series of oil tests have been proposed using seismic sound-blasts. The Norwegian company TGS Nopec has asked to do this, 50kms outside the marine park, but in between two outer reefs.
Peter Baillie – Chief Geologist – TGS Nopec
Can I make it clear: TGS Nopec does not drill for oil. [EDIT] We will acquire seismic data that gives a picture of the earth’s crust at that particular area over that particular geological province that allows you to work out the probability of subsequently finding oil and gas.
Queensland Government correspondence suggests TGS Nopec’s early strategy.
“…TGS-Nopec intend to discuss the proposal with the Commonwealth Government in an attempt to obtain some comfort or assurance that following completion of the proposed seismic survey, that the area would be later released for petroleum exploration, including drilling”.
The Minister says he’s given no such comfort and wants an environmental impact study before approving tests.
Dr David Kemp
Well I imagine that they are speculating that they may find oil and that oil companies may be interested. But it doesn’t matter what information oil companies have, they are not going to be allowed to mine in any way, which damages the Great Barrier Reef.
Q- Would they be allowed to mine in that location: 50 kilometres outside the Park?
Well that seems very close to the Park to me.
Peter Baillie – Chief Geologist – TGS Nopec
We’ll be having discussions with government seeking some sort of encouragement but we realise we can’t get a categorical assurance. I’m reasonably optimistic. We realised before we started this exercise that there were political problems but we thought that, with proper environmental management controls, that the community was mature enough to accept our proposition and I still hope that’s the case.
It is unlikely to be in any government’s interest to sanction oil wells here in the foreseeable future.Australians are too deeply attached to this underwater marvel.It’s also worth billions of tourist dollars to keep the reef pristine. Yet it faces a range of threats. In just a decade other world reefs have disintegrated.If the Great Barrier Reef was similarly degraded – who would care if oil platforms set up where there was once a wonder of the world.
May 2002 - A 50 minute Documentary
Submarine man
It has been actually predicted that by the year 2030 that all the coral reefs in the world may actually be dead.
All over the world precious coral reefs… are disappearing.Oil exploration, coral bleaching, intensive fishing and degraded water are also closing in on Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.At the same time, industries that affect the Reef are digging in and not giving an inch.
Ian Ballantyne
The reef is in very, very healthy condition. There is virtually no impact from agricultural means or from cane growing.
Greg Radley
If you’ve got an environmental damaging activity that’s so detrimental, after forty years of consistent fishing there shouldn’t be anything left here. It should be a marine desert down there.
A battle is brewing in the world’s largest marine park and it’s a battle over livelihoods, conservation and -most of all – whether the Reef really is at risk?
Titles:
“Beautiful one day…”
Reporter: Stephen McDonell
These tourists are going to see something absolutely unique: an unrivalled marvel under the sea.
It’s home to 400 types of coral, 1500 species of fish and 4,000 different molluscs.
Max Shepherd, Tourist Operator
Everyone around the world knows of the Great Barrier Reef. It’s basically seen as the world’s largest living thing and they almost see it as some sort of gauge of the health of the entire environment.
On this tour visitors are able to touch as well as look, under the supervision of a marine biologist.
Marine biologist
Can you all see we’ve got lots and lots of tiny bumps on each branch here? Now, when you pass this around, have a look at one individual bump and you’ll see a tiny hole inside and it’s inside that tiny hole that lives the one individual animal. So on here you’ve got perhaps one thousand individual animals growing together as a colony. OK so I’ll pass this around.
Coral is what the Marine Park is most famous for. It can be hard… or soft. The hard coral is made up of tube-like polyps embedded in a limestone skeleton. Over the years, they die, accumulate and are covered in the limestone that new corals and algae produce – this forms a reef. There are many reefs in the world but nothing on the scale of the Great Barrier Reef. Stretching 2,000 kilometres, building on itself, growing up and out, the modern reef is 8,000 years old, built on ancient reefs which took 100’s of thousands of years to form – maybe millions.
Tourists coming to see it in their hordes, bring hundreds of millions of dollars to Queensland every year.
Marine biologist
This one is called a… Sea Cucumber. I thought I’d bring this one up for you because it’s my favourite one. Once again, it has the same anatomy as the one I showed you before with the mouth… and the anus shooting up towards……..
Tourism inevitably causes pressure butEverything these tourists are shown by the biologist is put back. Compared to other industries, modern tourism has relatively low impact.
Max Shepherd
It’s critical that we have a low impact on the reef because, if we mess it up, we’re not going to have another opportunity.
And coral reefs are in deep trouble elsewhere. Human beings have turned them into underwater deserts.
This is a healthy reef.And here’s one in Jamaica where eighty per cent of corals have been destroyed in a decade.
Here’s a thriving segment of the Great Barrier Reef.And here’s what happens when nutrients from human activity get into the water: Algae takes off – completely strangling the coral. This is the United States, off the coast of Florida.
Global warming - causing coral bleaching - has destroyed reefs in Tahiti and the Seychelles.Human development has been disastrous for coral, over the last decade. According to the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network, 10% of the world’s reefs were lost by 1992. 27% were lost by the year 2000 and it’s expected 40% will be gone by 2010.
Maybe because of its size, or distance from massive development, the Barrier Reef has, so far, escaped widespread destruction but the pressure is coming.
Sometimes it comes in large and immediate forms.
In November 2000 the Malaysian ship Bunga Teratai Satu ran aground onto the Barrier Reef off Cairns.
The container ship smashed through pristine coral and was stuck in the marine park for 12 days. It was feared the vessel could become a permanent fixture after many failed attempts to refloat it.
The ship was only freed when three coral outcrops were blasted to pry it loose. A huge cleanup followed, including the costly removal of toxic paint from the coral shelf.
Virginia Chadwick – Chair, Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority
On a risk analysis we can look forward to round about one grounding, one accident a year and, hence, again in terms of our view here that we mustn’t take any more risk than if needed, that we mustn’t take gambles.
The Barrier Reef sees more major shipping accidents than any other part of the Australian coast.There’ve been 40 collisions or groundings in the Reef area since 1985. In all, oil tankers and large cargo ships make 6000 trips through difficult reef waters every year.
Virginia Chadwick An oil spill is in, in some ways if you’re going to say what single incident could cause the greatest damage to the Great Barrier Reef it would be a major oil spill.
A shipping review conducted after the Satu crash has recommended specialist shipping pilots for the Northern Reef area.Some environmentalists want to ban all ships not directly using a Queensland port from entering the Park at all. David Kemp is the Australian Environment Minister.
David Kemp, Minister for Environment
Q- Can you give me one good reason why these tankers should be allowed to move through the Marine Park if they’re not heading for a Queensland port?
Well as I say the Australian shipping is part of world shipping and those are significant factors that have to be taken into account as well. The critical thing is that there is a regulatory regime in place, which protects the Reef against the dangers that may come from shipping practises, which simply don’t respect the World Heritage values of the Reef.
If thousands of large ships worry reef watchers - they are even more alarmed by billions of tiny particles beneath the surface.Dr David Williams from the Co-operative Research Centre for the Reef has dived on many coral reefs around the world.
Dr David Williams, Research Director, CRC (Reef)
There are many examples in South East Asia where the population pressure on the land and particularly cutting down trees and so on has led to sedimentation and run-off of nutrients that’ve had major impacts on the reefs. Often those cases are compounded by over-fishing and by issues of sewerage and so on as well.
Q- And how severe have these impacts been?
Oh in some of these cases they’ve virtually killed the reefs.
Coral thrives in low-nutrient water. When nutrients are added, in the form of sewerage and, especially, fertiliser they totally change the balance of species.Algae, feeding on nutrients, spreads rapidly and corals can’t compete. It’s thought that sediment-covered surfaces are less suitable for juvenile corals and light needed by deeper corals is reduced by murky water.
Anecdotal evidence from divers suggests some Queensland reefs have already been buried by sediment
and footage taken this summer, off Cairns, seems to show mid-shelf reefs in the process of being smothered by nutrient-fuelled algae.
Susan Brown, Journalist
I grew up on the shores of the Barrier Reef. I used to go snorkelling, I used to look at the creatures and just wonder at, at the life there, at the, at the different species there. I go back there now as an adult – they’re coated in algae. The inner reef’s gone.
Coral faces natural threats – like an attack from Crown of Thorns Starfish – and has to regenerate afterwards.Nutrients, carried by sediment, hamper reproduction. Nutrient destruction may only be evident when a large area of coral fails to recover from natural losses.
Dr David Williams
Normally in crown of thorns, one can get a recovery of the shallow coral cover in 12 years time but the first signal, the first definite signal that run-off is having an effect on the reef, is likely to be when one of these reefs that has been impacted by something else, fails to recover. By then it’ll probably be too late to do anything about it.
Sedimentation occurs naturally off the coast but some scientists think three times more sediment flows out of Queensland Rivers than 150 years ago – carrying nitrogen, phosphorus and heavy metals.
The biggest contributor to man-made sediment is agriculture. To see where it starts, you have to leave the coast, travel across the cane fields and over the hills to cattle country.
Nat sot of Roger zipping around on his motorbike.Cattle grazing covers 75% of the Great Barrier Reef catchment. This is a high-flood area and, during the wet season, torrents of water naturally carry off soil. The run-off is increased when cattle have eaten-off ground cover and cut up riverbanks.
Yet there are solutions.
Roger Landsberg’s property, Trafalgar Station, is 200 kilometres inland from the Reef.
Traditionally graziers here fatten up cattle on their best land: the thick grass next to the river. But if river grass is depleted more soil will run into the water and down to the reef. To stop this, Roger Landsberg is building up grass by resting it from grazing.
Roger Landsberg, Grazier
By having good grass cover like that and you know anything above fifty per cent ground cover or grass cover will just about um totally minimise any soil loss and so, by bearing that in mind, you can actually ah improve the water quality in the rivers and that in turn ah stops the sediment going to the Reef.
Roger Lansdberg fences-off what scientists call the riparian areas and graziers call creek flats. He also rests about 20% of his property each year.
Roger Landsberg
Roger Landsberg in the clear
We have to acknowledge that there is a problem and we have to acknowledge that there is sediment leaving our inland areas and going to the Barrier Reef Lagoon and you only have to drive over the bridge of a, of a river that’s in flood - or even not quite in flood - to see that.
Roger’s not your average grazier but his attitudes stand out even more from other primary producers.
Roger Landsberg
It’s not, not for me to um to throw criticism on you know on other, on other farmers but I was a bit disappointed. I was at a conference recently and all the other industries took a proactive approach, recognised that there is a problem and outlined their strategies to try and overcome that, whereas the cane growers basically denied there was a problem or criticised the science.
Cane growers are crucial because the barrier reef is closest to land precisely where cane is planted.It covers a much smaller area than cattle and its contribution to overall sedimentation is much less.But the sediment leaving cane fields, is much higher in nutrients. This run-off carries herbicides and nitrogen fertiliser.
Cane is grown by thousands of small landholders. In recent years they’ve battled drought, floods and a collapse in world sugar prices. The last thing they want now is to change practices in ways that might cost them money.
The Cane Growers Organisation – led by General Manager Ian Ballantyne – says no one can prove cane has any impact on the reef.
Ian Ballantyne
The evidence, not the assertion, not the expressions of concern – but the evidence is actually pointing just the other way. That the reef is in very, very healthy condition. There is virtually no impact from ah agricultural means or from cane growing.
Imogen Zethoven, GBR Campaign Manager, World Wide Fund for Nature
It's unfortunate that Canegrowers have decided to take a position of denial, to simply denying the reality of the problem, denying that the scientific consensus on this issue and that's unfortunate and we hope that at some point they will actually recognise that there's a problem.
The Cane Growers Organisation accuses its opponents of exaggerating the science.Magnetic Island is a forty-minutes by boat from Townsville. Here a team from James Cook University is doing research that’s been seized on by the Sugar Cane Lobby.
Physicist Peter Ridd and his senior colleagues Dr. Piers Larcombe and Dr. Bob Carter have been measuring if sedimentation in the ocean itself has increased over the years. The Cane Growers Organisation is delighted with the results.
Dr Peter Ridd, Physicist.
Over the last few thousand years there’s, a lot of these inshore reefs have always had very high sediment concentrations and um the extra amount of ah stability and suspended sediment concentrations coming down from the rivers is actually very small compared with what is here naturally, at least for the inshore reefs.
Q- So it’s a counter argument to those who would say that sediment is currently smothering the reef?
It certainly says that sediment is not smothering the reef.
However marine biologists say it’s not the volume of sediment hurting coral.
David Williams
The sediment is the dead material. What is missed in this discussion is that about half the nitrogen, 80% of the phosphorous and all the herbicides and heavy metals are attached to the sediment and the only way that gets out to reef is if the sediment gets out to the reef. So it’s true that clean sediment per say may not be having the effect that we believed 10 years ago, but what comes with it is quite likely to have an effect.
David Williams also feels the James Cook team is being exploited.
David Williams
I think they believe very much in the message they’re telling and mostly what they do say is very accurate science. I’m not sure that they appreciate altogether the broader implications of what they’re saying. So it’s not their area of expertise to, to tell that.
Q- So maybe they’re being a bit naive by letting themselves be used?
That was your suggestion?
Q- Is it something you agree with?
It’s possible.
Peter Ridd
(edit)I’m always very careful to say although we know that the, the ah the sediments are not smothering the reef, we know that there are other issues related to sediments say from nutrients carried on the sediments and I always try to say that almost in the next sentence.
Q- But the cane growers seem to leave that bit out though?
Well not necessarily I mean it depends on who…
Q- The Cane Growers Organisation?
Well possible yeah.
Ian Ballantyne
The sort of ah impact the cane fields are having ah is in terms of sediment movement ah is less ah than occurs out of a tropical rainforest, or a virgin rainforest.
Q- Do you really think that the water running off a cane farm would be less damaging to the reef than water from a tropical rainforest?
Yes.
Q- Why would you believe that?
Filtration systems. I mean, basically sugar cane is like a large set of kidneys.
Q- So how can there be more nitrate coming out of a tropical rainforest than a cane farm?
Because the natural occurrence of those nitrates in those areas.
In a later e-mail, Mr Ballantyne’s Organisation admitted that nitrogen loss from cane is “generally believed to exceed what would be normally lost from a rainforest system.”
One member of the Cane Growers Organisation says there is a problem with his industry.Farmer Ross Digman has seen the adverse impact of cane farming on his local waterways. He says run off from cane fields kills fish.Rather than wait for science to confirm what he already knows, he has rebuilt several wetlands. They catch silt and provide habitat for fish, birds, even crocodiles.
Ross Digman Cane farmer
Basically, I’m a recreational fisherman and I was concerned the effect my own drains were having on the wetlands in the area and I thought I’d try to make a wetland to compensate for that to some extent.
Ross Digman
I’m told that phosphates for instance are only transported off farm and perhaps to the Barrier Reef Lagoon, attached to soil particles. So if we can trap soil particles, we’re reducing the possible off-farm impact of farming and this lagoon is – along with the others I’ve built are on my main drainage line and they act as major silt traps.
Tom Watters is another innovative cane farmers who’s built silt traps and replanted his riverbanks.
Once cane burning left bare fields open to flooding rain. Like many others Tom phased out burning in the 1980s.
These days, he leaves discarded plant matter on the ground in what’s called a Green Cane Trash Blanket.
Tom and Stephen
So this is it here is it?
Yeah this is the Green Cane Trash Blanket: the residue that’s left from harvesting last year.
And how does this effect run-off?
The rain doesn’t belt into the soil and the soil’s firm underneath it and the water trickles through the trash and leaves everything very stable.
Tom in the car
Q- Do you think people have been a little harsh on cane growers - or to what degree have they been - in terms of the criticisms that you’ve heard?
Yeah, I think they have been telling us we’re all the bad guys. I’m pretty sure that’s not quite correct because we’re only one player in the field and the catchment of the streams goes a lot further back than the cane fields.
But most cane farmers still till around 30% of their properties every year. Once the rain hits the tilled soil, sediment still gushes out of paddocks.
Ross Digman
Q- What do you think of the attitude generally of the cane industry towards the impact of cane growing on the environment?
Well we’re, we’re definitely having more impact than the industry would, well admits I think. That’s probably the best way I can say it.
Ross Digman wants his industry to fund a small environmental levy, once the world sugar price recovers.The money raised would be used to fund the mass rehabilitation of waterways. Instead he expects the cane industry will spend more than this on publicity hoping to convince the community that the industry is not environmentally harmful.
Another group of small operators are desperately trying to prove they don’t damage the marine park.
Greg Radley and his deck hand Rob Colinin operate a prawn trawler out of Townsville. They fish sections of the Park between land and reef.
Greg Radley, Commercial Fisherman
When I was growing up my father always said to me never ever argue with your friends about religion and politics. He should have said fishing as well because people have the same sort of you know passion about their fishing as what they do about their political and religious beliefs. It’s an incredibly emotional topic.
His dad could fish year round but new regulations restrict Greg to 118 days a year.
Trawling is not controlled for its effect on coral but for what it does to other sea creatures.
Trawlers drag their nets along the ocean bottom, even digging into the sea floor for prawns. Nets grab everything in their path. Its described as the underwater version of clear felling.
Greg Radley
The areas that we trawl we’ve been traditionally trawling these areas for forty years. Now if you’ve got an environmental ah damaging activity that’s so detrimental, after forty years of consistent fishing there shouldn’t be anything left here. Should be a marine desert down there and you guys see tonight when we wench up that it’s far from it. There is just an enormous, an enormous amount of seafood and other you know and other marine animals that are still present in the areas that are heavily trawled. We’re fishing in a heavily trawled area right now.
Though they’re only allowed to keep prawns, Greg and Rob drag up all manner of undersea life. The so-called by-catch has to be thrown back, alive or dead.
Greg Radley
Q- Do you think though that it’s a privilege really for fishermen to be working inside a Marine Park?
Fishermen were here long before it was declared a marine park. I think it’s a privilege that we provide the community with a, with a quality of seafood that’s world class.
Last year at Mission Beach, south of Cairns, trawler men and local residents clashed over prawn trawling.
When trawlers discard their by-catch, it’s largely dead. Last March, a fish kill washed up on Mission Beach, with disastrous consequences for the fishing industry.
Peter Heyward
The size of that slick of dead fish was probably 4 – about 4 kilometres long, 800 metres wide and up to 40 fish per square metre in the densest sections within that, and that was sort of a fairly massive you know result of a little bit of trawling going on and I think that sort of sparked everybody into having to do something about it.
Peter Heywood is a real estate agent in this sleepy town. He has plans to build a marina here.He’s also the chairman of the local marine advisory committee: one of many along the coast which help the Authority manage the Park.
Peter Heyward, Mission Beach Real Estate Agent
Mission Beach depends a fair amount on – not a fair amount, tourism is our only real industry in the town.
When the fish kill washed up on Mission Beach, Peter Heywood’s local Committee suggested to the Marine Park Authority that trawling be banned along a 766 square kilometre strip.
The Authority agreed and so did the Australian Government. The trawl ban was announced. Before it could be finally signed off, commercial fishermen flew to Canberra and convinced the Australian Environment Minister, David Kemp, to review the decision. After three days of intense lobbying by the Authority and trawler men, the Minister almost halved the size of the no trawl zone.
Virginia Chadwick
Well nobody, nobody likes to think that your best advice hasn’t been good enough and in this, in this case I’d be the first to concede that we, we went in with what we thought was a good, a good proposal.
David Kemp
There was no evidence that was provided to me that I found at all persuasive that fishing beyond the boundaries that I finally determined would have any adverse impact on Mission Beach or its communities.
Commercial fishermen are about to face a much bigger test than Mission Beach. On the advice of the Marine Park Authority, the Government is looking to ban fishing from hundreds of pockets of the Park.The new programme, designed to protect special regions, is likely to provoke a large and bitter conflict in the coming months.
Greg Radley
Q- Can you see a day when commercial fishing will be banned in the Marine Park area?
I would ah you know I really hope not but I’ve got a son at home only a little guy. He’s not two years old yet and, um if he wants to be a fisherman, unfortunately I don’t think it’s going to be there for him. You know, my gut feeling is that we are basically dinosaurs that um the future is not bright for fishing in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.
A coordinated national effort may save the reef from shipwrecks, sediment, and overfishing.But the biggest threat to the reef is global – coral bleaching caused by rising ocean temperature.
Semi-Submersible
It has been actually predicted that by the year 2030 that all the coral reefs in the world may actually be dead. This is actually due to global warming. [EDIT] If the oceans do get too warm the corals go into heat stress and the little zozantheli that live inside the corals will actually leave the coral and the corals actually turn white when this happens. This is known as coral bleaching.
Coral bleaching is hugely destructive.Coral is made up of a plant part and an animal part. The animal part is the multi-tentacled polyp. It, in turn, is covered in plants: single celled algae called zooxanthellae. Using photosynthesis the zooxanthellae supply sugars and give the coral its colour. If the ocean heats up – due to global warming – the zooxanthellae produce too much oxygen, which starts to poison the animal part of coral. As a preservation response, the coral spits out the zooxanthellae but then loses its food supply, turns white, can die and even finally crumble away. The reef may never recover.This is Scott reef off the northwest Coast of Australia. It was devastated by coral bleaching in 1998.That year saw the biggest coral die off in modern times hitting reefs world wide including the barrier reef.
This year, it’s happening again. This footage was taken off Magnetic Island just last month.
Dr Terry Done, Marine Scientist, Aust. Institute of Marine Science
The Great Barrier Reef has got off pretty lightly, even this time.
But contrast this with ah the Indian Ocean ah, Western Indian Ocean, in 1998 - places like the Seychelles - where large areas, 90% of the corals down to 30 metres depth are dead following…
Q- Completely destroyed?
Completely destroyed, followed - ah following bleaching by a very large pool of hot water floating round in the Indian Ocean.
Terry Done studies global climate modelling and thinks this may just be a start. The yellow areas show water temperature increasing in the Indian Ocean in 1998 when huge areas of coral were destroyed.This year increases in water temperature can be found much closer to Queensland.
Controlling global warming needs international co-operation. When the world tried to place limits on greenhouse gas emissions in Kyoto Australia fought for and got an increase in its emissions. Also, along with the United States, the Australian Government will not even ratify the protocol. Now the country’s Greenhouse credentials are looking even more shaky.The target Australia got at Kyoto was only 8%.But leaked Government documents have predicted Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions will blowout to 33% above 1990 levels in the coming eight years.
David Kemp
We’ve put $1 billion into greenhouse gas emission reductions. We are probably leading the world in our approach to greenhouse gas emissions through the establishment of a body such as the Australian Greenhouse Office. We’ve indicated that we’ll be working to meet our Kyoto target - And I believe Australia is a very responsible international citizen in this regard …
If the largest single threat to the reef is a warming planet, there’s a certain irony that the latest controversy over reef protection is about the major contributor to greenhouse emissions – fossil fuel.
Over the past 17 years, at least five separate exploration teams have been allowed into the Marine Park, collecting data on the presence of oil: three even conducted drilling for rock samples.The Australian Government has funded much of this work and says it is purely scientific.
Susan Brown, Journalist
What they’re saying publicly is we’ve got this resource, the Barrier Reef and we would never, hand on our hearts, let anybody ever go in there and look for oil. But privately they’re saying ‘you can go in there with a great big tax-payer funded seismic ship and build up a data base of exactly the sort of information that the oil industry would need should they ever want to actually thoroughly exploit the resources in that area of the Coral Sea’.
Freelance journalist, Susan Brown, has studied boxes of Government documents on oil testing in and around the Great Barrier reef. She obtained them through Freedom of Information and also from the Australian Democrats, her former employers.This political party had successfully put up a Senate motion calling for the Government to provide all documents about oil drilling on the Reef.
Susan Brown
Well, I think ordinary Australians would be shocked because the language has been: ‘We won’t allow the oil industry in’; ‘The reef is protected for evermore’; ‘It’s a no-go zone for oil’ but secretly the government – at least certainly some parts of the government – have been allowing, encouraging, collecting and disseminating information which is of use to the oil industry.
Dr David Kemp
I don’t believe that any government department would’ve provided information to oil companies with the thought that oil drilling on the Reef might be permitted. Oil drilling on the Reef is absolutely banned. It has been since 1975 and that isn’t going to be changed.
The documents show cooperation between the Australian Government and oil companies; extensive oil industry interest in any oil deposits under the reef and great enthusiasm when indicators of oil have been found. The Townville Trough, 50 kilometres outside the reef, may contain 5 billion barrels: Australia’s biggest single reserve.
One of the documents also claims that the government’s own Bureau of Resource Sciences requested access to scientific research for“ use in re-assessing the undiscovered petroleum resources of the northeast Australian margin.”
This is especially sensitive because the Marine Park was set up in the first place in the 1970’s, under a law to protect the Barrier Reef from the threat of oil drilling.
Dr David Kemp
Q- If anyone was looking for oil in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park – just looking for it – would that be against the law?
Well it would be a totally pointless activity because no oil drilling is permitted within the Park.
Q- But would it be in breach of the Act to look for oil?
Well it would be because it’s not a scientific activity, which is there to help us manage the Reef in a better way.
Q- And haven’t then Government departments been skating close to the edge of the law by looking for information which might…?
Well look I haven’t seen any evidence of that.
Now a new series of oil tests have been proposed using seismic sound-blasts. The Norwegian company TGS Nopec has asked to do this, 50kms outside the marine park, but in between two outer reefs.
Peter Baillie – Chief Geologist – TGS Nopec
Can I make it clear: TGS Nopec does not drill for oil. [EDIT] We will acquire seismic data that gives a picture of the earth’s crust at that particular area over that particular geological province that allows you to work out the probability of subsequently finding oil and gas.
Queensland Government correspondence suggests TGS Nopec’s early strategy.
“…TGS-Nopec intend to discuss the proposal with the Commonwealth Government in an attempt to obtain some comfort or assurance that following completion of the proposed seismic survey, that the area would be later released for petroleum exploration, including drilling”.
The Minister says he’s given no such comfort and wants an environmental impact study before approving tests.
Dr David Kemp
Well I imagine that they are speculating that they may find oil and that oil companies may be interested. But it doesn’t matter what information oil companies have, they are not going to be allowed to mine in any way, which damages the Great Barrier Reef.
Q- Would they be allowed to mine in that location: 50 kilometres outside the Park?
Well that seems very close to the Park to me.
Peter Baillie – Chief Geologist – TGS Nopec
We’ll be having discussions with government seeking some sort of encouragement but we realise we can’t get a categorical assurance. I’m reasonably optimistic. We realised before we started this exercise that there were political problems but we thought that, with proper environmental management controls, that the community was mature enough to accept our proposition and I still hope that’s the case.
It is unlikely to be in any government’s interest to sanction oil wells here in the foreseeable future.Australians are too deeply attached to this underwater marvel.It’s also worth billions of tourist dollars to keep the reef pristine. Yet it faces a range of threats. In just a decade other world reefs have disintegrated.If the Great Barrier Reef was similarly degraded – who would care if oil platforms set up where there was once a wonder of the world.