WHY MARINE EDUCATION
Our Island Home
In Australia, the driest inhabited continent on earth with a coastline (including islands) stretching for 70,000kms; with 85% of its 21m population living within 50kms of the sea; with its Exclusive Ocean Economic Zone making its area greater than the area of the land, we have little effective study of this massive area and its ecosystems, in our schools.
Why Marine Education?
On the sixteenth of November 1994, Australia more than doubled its size. The EEZ (Exclusive Economic Zone) is 1.3 times the size of the land mass, yet "most Australians leave school with little more than a basic understanding of the sea, and the important issues affecting the marine environment... the main source of information about the marine environment in Australia today is television" SOMER February 1995.
1. Educational rationale:
- There is an urgent need to lift the level of awareness of the marine environment with the general public
- The State of the Marine Environment Report (SOMER) is the first comprehensive description of Australia’s marine environment, its uses and values, the issues and threats affecting it, and its management. This report is critical of the lack of marine education in schools and in conjunction with Ocean Outlook is suggesting a national marine education policy
- The EEZ should have the same comprehensive treatment in schools as its land mass equivalent. eg: Aquaculture vs agriculture, fishing vs forestry etc
- Of the thirty three animal phyla twenty eight are found in the sea and thirteen are exclusively marine yet there is almost no treatment of the marine environment in schools.
- The total area of the continental shelf around Australia is 14.8 million square kilometres. We have around 12,000 islands and 783 major estuaries. Our three northern rivers have been pronounced "almost dead" again with no treatment of preventative treatment for rivers and oceans in schools.
- The length of the coastline is estimated to be 69,630 kilometres at a 0.1km scale - little is known of it or its ecosystems
2. Social and international responsibility:
- Australia is required to manage, research, develop, preserve and protect the marine EEZ ie: it is required to manage and develop these resources or risk losing them
- The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and the United Nations Conference on the Environment and Development (UNCED) are explicit in their demands for nations to prevent, reduce and control degradation of the marine environment, and to promote the integrated management and sustainable development of marine resources
- SOMER describes the state of the Australian marine environment as ‘generally good’. Education is needed to keep it that way and to address the poor ratings given to those marine habitats around urban and industrial areas
- There will be a national strategy for economically sustainable development. Any such strategy will rely on a well informed and responsible public. It is patently obvious that this will be achieved through our education systems
- A recent OECD report on Australia’s environmental performance says that the capacity of Australia’s environmental agencies is not adequate to address all their responsibilities. This can only be addressed through education
3. Social and international responsibility:
- Australia’s marine territories could contribute between $50 - 80 billion per year to the national economy within a quarter of a century
- Australia’s wild fish catch is 200,000 tonnes per year, worth $1.3 billion - its potential is $5 - 10 billion by the year 2020
- Australia has the potential to develop a marine based pharmaceutical and agrochemical industry worth between $2- 5 billion per year by 2020
- International shipping is worth $1.15 billion, Coastal $647 million and shipbuilding $237 million. There are 12,000 overseas shipping arrivals and 380 million tonnes of cargo is carried annually in Australian waters
- Marine tourism is currently worth $8 million per year and is doubling every five years
- Oil and gas are worth $8.21 billion per year. 85% of this comes from offshore. 90% of this country’s untapped reserves are in the EEZ
- It is estimated that the southern bluefin tuna industry could be worth more than the Australian beef industry within ten years
- Recreational Boating and supporting marinas are an Australia-wide industry nearly triple the size of Australian ski resorts, twice the size of the backpacking industry and in direct employment , larger than the forestry industry and equivalent to coal mining and water supply.
- There are 230,000 registered recreational boats in NSW and 450,000 boat drivers licences in an industry which: generates over $3.3Bn in spending; supports over 20,000 jobs; has developed a clean marinas program; is creating carbon neutral marinas; and is educating boat owners on sustainability.
- The fastest growing sector of the Australian tourism industry is caravanning and camping yet coastal caravan parks are closing in NSW and being taken up by developers.
- Over 68% of visitors to Australia come to experience our unique natural environment, mainly the coasts, sea and reefs, forming part of an $81Bn industry that earns more than coal and the combined earnings of gas, beef and aluminium, providing 9.6% of all jobs.
- Predictions are that with a sea level rise of 0.2m some Sydney beaches could experience shoreline erosion up to 22 metres.
- The oceans span nearly 75% of the Earth’s surface and directly support 70% of the Planet’s photosynthesis.
- Australia has the third largest fishing zone in the world; the largest area of coral reefs; 80% of the known species in southern waters are endemic; the shipping industry carries more than $200Bn worth of cargo in an out of Australia each year mostly in foreign-owned vessels.
- Recent research has highlighted the potential for seabed-based methane hydrates to meet some energy demands as these may contain over 30 times the existing natural gas resources worldwide (MCCN).
- Recent research has highlighted the potential for seabed-based methane hydrates to meet some energy demands as these may contain over 30 times the existing natural gas resources worldwide (MCCN).
- Carnegie Corp estimates that between Perth and Brisbane there is around 500GW of recoverable wave energy available in the oceans, more than 10 times the current installed power generation capacity in Australia (MCCN).
4. Uniqueness of our Marine environment:
- Australia has 51,000 km2 of seagrasses, representing the highest biodiversity of seagrasses in the world, the largest areas of temperate seagrass and one of the largest areas of tropical seagrass.
- Die-back of seagrass beds is one of the most serious issues affecting Australia’s marine environment, caused in part by elevated nutrients from stormwater and sewage discharges. In Victoria’s Westernport Bay, around 85% of the total biomass of seagrass has been lost.
- Australia has the third largest area of mangroves in the world, lining about 6,000 km of Australia’s coast, providing habitat for both bait-fish and table fish.
- Research at CSIRO has shown mangroves are also essential nursery habitats for prawns and are vital for sustaining the northern prawn fishery, one of Australia’s most valuable fisheries.
- More than 2,000 species of macroalgae have been identified around Australia’s southern coastline from south-west Western Australia to NSW and Lord Howe Island.
- Western Australia has 558 species of macroalgae (seaweed) while the tallest kelp forests, up to 30 m high, are off Tasmania’s east coast.
- Tropical Australia occupies 42% of the nation’s landmass yet generates 65% of its runoff.
- Coastal habitats of tropical Australia (eg: seagrasses, mangroves, fringing reefs) are critical to most of the species that sustain indigenous hunting, recreational fishing and tourism, and commercial fishing.
- More than 6,000 shipwrecks have occurred in Australian waters in the past 400 years.
- The rivers of Queensland’s east coast catchments are estimated to deliver 14 million tonnes of sediments to estuaries and coastal marine waters annually.
- In NSW, 37% of estuaries have more than half the land area of their catchments cleared of vegetation.
5. Our present situation:
- One quarter of all Australians live within three kilometres of the coast, 86% in the coastal catchments and two-thirds reside in coastal towns and cities.
- While 70% of the Australian coast is sparsely populated, there are major existing pressure points on coastal environments and new regions developing such as coastal central and northern New South Wales, south-east Queensland, south-east Melbourne and south-west Western Australia.
- 90% of new dwellings were constructed in the coastal zone in the past 10 years.
- It has been estimated that 17% of mangroves and 21% of saltmarsh has been lost to coastal development since European settlement.
- Australia is a world leader in using marine protected areas (MPAs) for marine conservation and management and in 1994 had 24% of the total number of MPAs in the world.
- Two of the largest Marine Protected Areas in the world are the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park (declared 1975) and the Great Australian Bight Marine Park (declared 1998) (3). However, only 5% of Australia’s coastal estuaries and marine habitats are formally reserved as Marine Protected Areas.
- A 1991 review of government interests in Jervis Bay, NSW, showed that at least 22 Acts of Commonwealth parliament and 29 Acts of State Parliament applied directly to the management of the Bay’s resources.
- Almost 60 government reports and inquiries have been undertaken on Australia’s coastal zone between 1960 and 1997.
- Initial work by the Bureau of Tourism Research reports that 42% of domestic tourism and 50% of international tourism is now marine or coastal-based.
- Human pressure in the form of recreation, waste disposal, urban and agricultural drainage, fishing and aquaculture, toxicants, physical habitat destruction, and the introduction of exotic organisms mineral exploration and extraction, construction and reclamation, and transport have the greatest impact on coastal waters.
- The dumping of jarosite, an industrial by-product of zinc production in Tasmania which has been disposed of at sea for many years, was halted in 1997 in accordance with the London Convention on Dumping at Sea (CMR).
- A 1994 report estimates around 5,000 tonnes of oil from urban-runoff enters the marine system each year. An additional 11,000 tonnes comes from municipal and industrial waste.
- It is estimated that globally 36% of oil pollution to the marine environment enters the sea from the land. Additional sources are estimated at 45% from shipping (12.5% from tanker accidents), 9% from the atmosphere, 7.7% from natural sources and 1.5% from offshore oil exploration and production.
- In NSW, urban stormwater is a major pollutant of the coastal environment. Between Palm Beach and Cronulla, 200 stormwater outlets of about 450 mm diameter discharge water containing high levels of pollutants such as sediments, bacteria, nutrients, trace metals and organic chemicals.
- Each year, Australia’s sewerage systems discharge around 10,000 tonnes of phosphorous and 100,000 tonnes of nitrogen, most of which reaches the sea (2).
- All coastal discharges of domestic wastewater in Victoria will be treated to secondary standard by the end of 1998 (5).
- there is no Marine Science subject in the NSW curriculum.
6. Why is MARINE EDUCATION SO CRITICALLY IMPORTANT:
Best summed up by Baba Dioum a Singalese environmentalist in 1968...
“In the end we will conserve only what we love,
We love only what we understand,
We will understand only what we are taught.”
All Content Copyright © Marine Teachers Association of New South Wales