Babcock Family Forum

Richard Kenchington: Well there?s certainly a very strong opposition by some very vocal members of the fishing community, some of them because philosophically, they want to go back to the time when there were no restrictions, when anyone could fish, anywhere, they had the right to do so, and they could take whatever they wanted. And one of the real problems we have in the marine environment, compared to terrestrial, is that you can?t walk people around and say, ?There, look at the damage?. If you can take people into the water and say, ?Here is an area which is not fished. Observe the fish. Here is an area which is fished regularly, and here?s an area which is hammered. Look at the difference.? You don?t have to argue for very long.

Russ Babcock: The work that I was doing in New Zealand involved a few marine reserves where we were able to document changes in the abundance of snapper and rock lobster. We became aware probably about 15 or 20 years after the reserve was set up, that the entire habitat was changing inside the reserves, relative to what it was outside.

Pia Winberg: Russ Babcock, a principal researcher with the CSIRO. His research in New Zealand is a textbook example of the cascading effects on a marine habitat after a reserve has been established.

Russ Babcock: The process that was occurring was that the fish and the rock lobsters were preying on one of the main grazers in the system, the sea urchin, and as the numbers of those sea urchins was reduced by predation, this allowed algae to recolonise the reefs which had previously been stripped right back to almost bare rock. And because there?s more algae in the system, this sent a lot of other implications for things living in the system that were far removed from the predators that were directly protected by the reserve.

Pia Winberg: So it sounds like it?s changed from a desert landscape to a lush forest.

Russ Babcock: Yes, that?s a very good analogy, and it really is almost like an underwater desert when you look at some of these areas of bare rock covered with a thin veneer of algae. It doesn?t provide a lot of space for some animals to hide and it doesn?t provide a lot of food. So the sort of things that we noticed flowing on from this change in the habitat were that some snails that were common became rarer, these are things like limpets that like to have bare rock to glide around on, but other snails became more common, and more abundant, right down to changes in the detrital food cycle where algae, broken down by micro-organisms and then become food for filter feeders like oysters and clams and mussels, and the abundance of that food that comes from the algae is also measurably greater inside the marine reserve than it is outside. So the reserves have really given us a window into how the ecosystem functions, and how the parts are linked together.

Pia Winberg: How much time would it take before you could see changes like this?

Russ Babcock: Well the changes that occurred in New Zealand took place over 20 years or more. It might not happen that way in all places. Actually, some of the fish species increased very rapidly, particularly the snapper, so that after only two or three years of protection, had almost ten times as many inside the sanctuary as outside, and that was because of seasonal movements of these fish, and when they moved into the sanctuary, some of them stayed and the numbers built up quite rapidly. But the flow-on effects to other smaller fish might take quite a long time if they related to changes in the habitat.

Pia Winberg: And do you get any reports from local fishermen then that they actually experience an increase in number and size of snapper outside those marine protected areas?

Russ Babcock: Well I?m one of the local fishermen and I caught a 20-pounder just around the corner from the reserve one time, so that was my personal experience, and it was very gratifying. People don?t talk too much about their favourite fishing spots, but you do quite often see boats anchored on the boundary. So presumably people are hoping that the fish will cross the line or are cheating actually by letting their lines drift into the reserves. But the perception of the local community in the area, where I used to actually live, was anti the reserve at first, but really everyone in the community thinks it?s a great idea now, if not for fishing, because it?s a big tourist drawcard and it brings a lot of earning into the community.