EPA Last days.. should I care?

[Burley_Boy]

Cryptic enough subject line?...:D
EPA Moreton Bay Draft. Submissions close the 7th March so please have your say. Its an electronic lodgement that fairly quick to fill out, almost multiple choice Like/Don't Like/Sux.

I lodged my online response to the EPA today.
http://www.getinvolved.qld.gov.au/consultqld/index.cfm?go=consultonline.viewIssue&activityID=149

I also wrote a letter and took to my local State members office.
Member for Broadwater, Peta-Kaye Croft. They know me well there since the election, I'm known as that mad guy in the fishing shirt.;D

I'm on the Gold Coast and I was saddened to hear that so far I am the first to have complained about the loss of foreshore on South Stradbroke Island to a green zone. The extension of the green zone in Coombabah Creek was well taken care of and she's working hard on ensuring that remains a yellow zone only. Last week the residents at Couran motivated themselves enough to make a bit of noise about the foreshore greenzone on South Straddie but honestly guys lets use our pollies they are there to be chatted with and they can't represent us if we don't give a shit!

[Lucky_Phill]

Yes you should care and many many more should, but apathy will forbid it.

You are correct, hand delivering a letter and speaking personally with your local members is a major way of bringing the issue to a head.

BY NO MEANS DON"T STOP DOING THIS AFTER THE 7TH MARCH. The deal / plan is not set in concrete as you would believe as the wave of mis-content is getting larger and the rumble is starting to be felt. We will have Green Zones in some fashion but keeping up the pressure until the day the zones hit the legislative tables and the printed version hits the floor is definately on the cards.

Phill

[Dodgy_Back]

Burley Boy

I also wrote to Peta Kaye Croft a while ago with objections to closing the South Straddy fore shore.
She did reply but with an obvious party line pre written letter telling me now good it was that the foreshore to the north and south of the couran Cove area would still be open to beach fishing.

While last at Couran Cove I mentioned the closure to a couple of residents. It was the first they heard of it and wonder if the resort knows aswell seeing that they run 4wd beach fishing tours.

Mick

[castlemaine]

Captain Bligh, knows there's an election coming up soon. What's the bet the decision will be dragged on till after the election.

[Burley_Boy]

Good on ya Mick. Well I made some more noise today and I'm nervous what will get said.
I had sent a letter to the GC Sun and Rebecca who had been writing a few pro fishing articles called me up and came out and saw me today:o

An hour later they had mug shots of me and pages and pages of notes so I can only hope that whatever she puts together doesn't make me look like a total dick, but I just had to do what I could! So if looking like a dick helps then so be it.

Photographer said "look angry" ....

[Scott nthQld]

Captain Bligh, knows there's an election coming up soon. What's the bet the decision will be dragged on till after the election.

didn't stop them when they made the GBRMPA Green zones..........

I don't know if this is the case in SEQ, but up here, when the green zones were being developed, all the supposed scientific research was never available for public interpretation, have they pulled this stunt down there as well?

[Fafnir]

Photographer said "look angry" ....

Redneck angry, or disappointed but regulation arm length angry?

I'm sure you will come across just fine, well done on sending the letter in.

[Tangles]

Actually the objections to the 2nd airport make interesting reading, ie each subsection had list of objectors, sadly most where either nil or you coukd count them on their own hand... if people spent 10% of the energy they do reading and posting on these forums, well there might be a lot more objections,,, but if I was int the BAC, i'd simply point out, hey 1 objection to this etc etc.... ie put up your opinions and make yourself heard

mike

[UNCLE NUGGY]

Good on ya Mick. Well I made some more noise today and I'm nervous what will get said.
I had sent a letter to the GC Sun and Rebecca who had been writing a few pro fishing articles called me up and came out and saw me today:o

An hour later they had mug shots of me and pages and pages of notes so I can only hope that whatever she puts together doesn't make me look like a total dick, but I just had to do what I could! So if looking like a dick helps then so be it.

Photographer said "look angry" ....

HI Burley Boy
just read the article ,very good.
maybe a little more angry next time
cheers
UN

[Burley_Boy]

That was the shot before he said "look angry.."!

That article was a summary by the reporter of a 1hr interview and 2 x A4 pages of statements. You never know what they then end up with and if it read as a bit of a kick against the MBAA then that was not the intent though this was a local issue in a local rag and the MBAA was not proposing what us locals like, so a bit of a hit was warranted though I support them in their fight in Moreton Bay 100%.

A bit of an error at the end re the yellow zones but overall they didn't get it too wrong.
I did like how the letters to the editor read though, for those who don't get the local they placed two colums of highlighted text in the middle of the letters to the editor. A couple of quotes from this letter read as follows;

"If an area is in need of protection from locals fishing it too hard, I'd be the first to encourage its protection. Thats why I support size and bag limits.
To target recreational fishers with blanket closures in areas that are in no way threatened by their activities is just a disgraceful missuse of power........."

It then stated that if pro fishing in the Estuary was damaging the the area then a yellow zone would do the trick. Finishing off with this little statement..

"At the same time lets look at how we can support our professional fishermen with a sustainable industry rather than importing cheap alternatives we have no control over in how they are harvested."

Yep I'm kinda peeved how we can import Asian prawns and Kenyan fish and our fishermen have to compete against this. We are hitting the locals with strict guidelines yet allow imports caught without any of the same limitations on catch and conditions.

[Moonlighter]

Didn't see your article or comments, but for what it's worth:

MBAA's final submission dealt with as many of the issues raised by the Gold Coast fraternity as we could - the full version will be available on our website (see marineqld.com.au) shortly.

The main concerns re GC expressed to us were :

1. Coombabah - our final submission recommended that just the existing long standing fishery closure area be made into a green zone with no extension; and

2. The area off Sth Straddie, and particularly the fact that EPA proposed to close the beach opposite Couran. MBAA's original proposal was to keep the beach in that area open and we reiterated that in the final sub. We also made sure that the wreck where many people get livies was outside the EPA's proposed GZ.

More generally, we also put forward a compelling argument for no silly restrictions to 1 line etc in yellow zones and that normal fishing rules should apply.

We also recommended that all navigation channels (particularly those leading to marinas, boat ramps and similar locations be zoned General Use (light blue) to ensure that they can be properly maintained and dredged so they stay useable into the future.

Regards

Grant

[Burley_Boy]

Thanks Grant and thanks for what you guys do. The local noise here was against the extension of the Coombabah Ck zone which I understood was a MBAA tradeoff for another area in the bay. Maybe that was an earlier propossal that suggested closing the Ck down to the bridge?
My "quote" in the paper read a bit negative which is a bit tough as I support you guys 100% though I'm sure you support us all kicking up a stink about our local closures as well (unless necessary).
My involvement only came about as they jumped at the chance of interviewing a local peeved at the straddie green zone. The EPA had retorted that the turtle was threatened, though I said not by us and pushed the pollution angle. Anyway keeping a vocal opposition to the EPA stupidity is important even if we are missquoted at times.

Regards
Joakim

[Chris Ryan]

any publicity is good publicity Joakim. Well done for giving it a go.

Chris

[Local_Guy]

I'm not in favour of Green Zones, but i think they are like a couldersak.

My statement being.. With the green zones in place, the fish naturally populate. Up in Yeppoon they fished the green zone for scientific research and tagged 2000 selected fishin in 2 days. .. But what would happen if they pulled the plug on the green zone "cold turkey". I could imagine that that once was green zone would be fished out within a month as every man and his dog would head there straight away. Yellow zones won't help as you are still allowed to fish with 1 rod, or 1 hook. or 6 hooks if using a bait jib and you can buy some preety big 35lb bait jigs....

We have more than enough green zones up here in CQ and they want more while the commercial fisherman dodges the bullet big time. Once they are there don't expect them to ever be removed, but expect more. You SEQ'ers have to fight to keep your waterways yours or they will be gone forever.

As to another post someone mentioned about boycotting green zones and getting 100 mates to go fishing.. Good idea, but don't use hooks. Use sinkers only as this should get you off the legal side of things.. "how are you going to catch a fish with sinkers".

Best of luck with stopping the closures, you guys will need it.

[Burley_Boy]

I'm with you Chris.
Get on yer friggin soapbox, don't like what I said... get a bigger soapbox.. :)

Oh yeah, and if you like to send comments they're more entertaining in the open forum.;D

[Moonlighter]

Hi Joakim

The earlier MBAA proposal in our first response to EPA re Coombabah was based on what we genuinely believed EPA's original "area of interest" was for the Coombabah area.

At that time, you'll recall that EPA refused to give us, or anyone else for that matter, a map of their "Areas of Interest" and although we eventually got some GPS coordinates for some of the AOI's off them, they didn't include Coombabah Ck. So all we could go on was a brief meeting where we had to scribble down rough notes and sketches on what we could see on a very broad scale map that they showed us and wouldn't let us take copies of. We're still not sure what their original AOI for Coombabah was!

The result was that in the first stage of our report we felt we basically had little choice but to go with with what we honestly believed they had proposed because there were few alternative areas with similar habitat types available, which was down to the bridge. Between a rock and a hard place, as they say! So it was not our trade-off, it was simply the best response we could make to EPA's proposals at the time.

However when the draft was released and it became apparent that they were now seeking a fairly small extension, we revisited the issue and our sub is very clear that we support only the existing long-term fisheries closure area to be turned green.

Regards

Grant