Australia's new Sustainable Ocean Plan is welcome. The real test will be whether environmental protection, seafood production, food security, regional communities and consumers are genuinely considered together.
Australia has a new Sustainable Ocean Plan.
That should matter to every Australian—not simply governments, environmental organisations, fishing industries or scientists.
Our ocean helps feed us.
It provides jobs and livelihoods, supports regional communities, generates energy, carries trade, provides recreation and tourism, regulates our climate and supports extraordinary biodiversity.
The Australian Government estimates that our Blue Economy now generates $229 billion in economic output each year and supports more than 700,000 jobs. Importantly, the Government's own description of the new Plan specifically recognises that fisheries and aquaculture provide crucial food security. DCCEEW
That last point deserves considerably more attention.
Because if Australia is serious about creating a sustainable ocean economy, we need to be clear about what the word sustainable actually means.
Sustainability cannot have only one dimension
For too long, discussions about the ocean can become divided into competing camps.
Conservation versus fishing.
Environment versus industry.
Marine protection versus food production.
Commercial fishing versus recreational fishing.
These are often presented as though success for one must automatically mean loss for another.
The Seafood Consumers Association believes Australia needs to move beyond that thinking.
A genuinely sustainable ocean should be:
environmentally sustainable;
economically sustainable;
socially sustainable; and
capable of sustainably producing nutritious food.
These objectives will sometimes involve difficult trade-offs. Protecting biodiversity and threatened species is essential.
But so too are food security, regional employment, viable businesses, access to nutritious seafood and the communities that have developed around Australia's marine resources.
The challenge for good public policy is not to pretend those tensions don't exist.
It is to measure them, explain them and make decisions transparently on the evidence.
The Government's new Plan gives us an opportunity
Environment and Water Minister Murray Watt released Australia's Sustainable Ocean Plan on 23 September.
Its eight priority areas include taking climate action, growing ocean industries, working with First Nations peoples, protecting and restoring the marine environment, strengthening collaboration, ensuring equity and inclusion, building knowledge and mobilising finance. Minister for the Environment
Those are encouraging principles.
More than 800 people and organisations were involved in developing the Plan over two years, including a specific workshop with the fisheries and aquaculture sector. DCCEEW
The Plan also recognises something particularly important:
Australia's ocean is used by multiple people and industries competing for space and resources. DCCEEW
That is reality.
The question now is how those competing interests will be balanced when difficult decisions have to be made.
Hinchinbrook provides a timely example
That question is not theoretical.
The Queensland Seafood Industry Association has this month called upon the Queensland Government to reconsider restrictions affecting commercial net fishing around Hinchinbrook.
QSIA argues that the restrictions have consequences for commercial fishing families, seafood production and consumers and has called for the fishery to be reopened. Its media release says the fishery had historically been important to small coastal communities and argues that subsequent fishing restrictions deserve reconsideration. Qld Media re Hinchinbrook
There is another side to the story.
Hinchinbrook is an environmentally important area. The Queensland Government describes the Hinchinbrook Fish Habitat Area as a 12,268-hectare system containing extensive mangroves, seagrass beds, deep-water channels and other important habitat. It supports commercial, recreational and Indigenous fisheries and provides habitat for species including Barramundi, Blue Salmon, Grey Mackerel and prawns. Business Queensland
More broadly, the Australian and Queensland governments have committed more than $160 million to phasing out gillnet fishing in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area by mid-2027, primarily to reduce risks to threatened, endangered and protected species including dugongs, dolphins, turtles and sawfish. Queensland Government
SCA is not using this article to adjudicate that scientific and management debate.
We are raising a different question.
When governments make decisions such as these, are all the consequences being measured?
What disappears when fishing disappears?
Closing or restricting a fishery produces an obvious environmental intervention.
But there may also be less visible consequences.
How much seafood production is lost?
Where will replacement seafood come from?
Will it be Australian or imported?
What happens to price?
What happens to regional employment?
What happens to fishing businesses and their suppliers?
Does fishing effort move somewhere else?
What happens to Australia's food security?
And what is the net environmental outcome if locally produced seafood is replaced by seafood harvested elsewhere and transported thousands of kilometres to Australian consumers?
Those questions do not prove that a fishing restriction is wrong.
They demonstrate why the complete consequences of a decision need to be understood.
Start with the consumer
This connects directly with the lesson SCA recently highlighted from the late Professor David Hughes—“Dr Food”.
Food systems ultimately exist because somebody eats what they produce.
Yet consumers can become almost invisible when policies concerning agriculture, fisheries, aquaculture and marine resources are designed.
The discussion takes place between governments, regulators, scientists, environmental organisations and industries.
At the end of that chain is the person who needs affordable, nutritious food.
That person deserves representation too.
Seafood is not simply another ocean commodity.
It is food.
And Australia's future ocean policy should recognise seafood's contribution to nutrition and food security alongside its economic contribution.
Read SCA's “Dr Food's lasting lesson for Australia's seafood future”
Protection and production should not be enemies
There is an opportunity in Australia's Sustainable Ocean Plan to change the way we approach these questions.
The international framework behind the Plan is itself revealing. The High Level Panel for a Sustainable Ocean Economy describes the objective as an ocean economy that protects ocean health and biodiversity, produces sustainably and fosters prosperity for people whose livelihoods depend upon the ocean. DCCEEW
Notice the combination.
Protect. Produce. Prosper.
Not one at the expense of considering the others.
Australia should embrace that philosophy.
A healthy marine environment is essential to sustainable seafood production.
Sustainable seafood production can provide nutritious food, regional employment and economic activity.
Those outcomes should reinforce one another wherever possible.
We need better measures of what we lose as well as what we protect
Environmental decisions quite properly require scientific evidence.
SCA believes significant restrictions on food-producing activities should also involve transparent assessment of their food, economic, social and regional consequences.
Where a proposed measure removes seafood production, decision-makers should be able to explain:
- how much production will be affected;
- the likely effect on seafood availability and price;
- whether domestic product is likely to be replaced by imports;
- effects on regional businesses and employment;
- displacement of fishing activity;
- alternative management options considered; and
- how the environmental benefits compare with the wider consequences.
That is not an argument against conservation.
It is an argument for better decision-making.
Consumers need a seat at the new ocean table
One of the most interesting commitments accompanying the Sustainable Ocean Plan is the establishment of a National Ocean Steering Committee and a National Ocean Advisory Group.
The Government says the Advisory Group will bring together diverse stakeholders and expertise so that different perspectives are heard on important ocean issues. Expressions of interest for membership are expected to open soon. DCCEEW
SCA welcomes that initiative.
But we would add one request.
Make sure consumers are represented.
Not simply industry.
Not simply government.
Not simply science.
Not simply conservation organisations.
The people who ultimately purchase, cook and eat Australia's aquatic food deserve a voice in determining the future of the resources that produce it.
A test for Australia's Blue Economy
The Sustainable Ocean Plan contains much that SCA can support.
It recognises food security.
It recognises growing ocean industries.
It recognises environmental protection.
It recognises regional communities.
And it recognises the need for collaboration.
Now comes the harder part—turning those principles into decisions.
Hinchinbrook will not be the last difficult fisheries debate Australia faces. Marine parks, climate change, offshore energy, aquaculture, recreational fishing, commercial fishing and conservation will increasingly compete for ocean space and political attention.
We should not approach those debates by asking simply:
“What should we stop?”
We should also ask:
“What do we need to protect?”
“What can we produce sustainably?”
“What are the consequences of removing that production?”
“How can science and innovation reduce conflict?”
And, importantly:
“What does this mean for the consumer?”
A sustainable ocean should be capable of supporting healthy ecosystems and healthy people.
It should protect biodiversity while enabling responsible production.
It should sustain regional communities as well as marine environments.
And it should recognise that producing nutritious food from our oceans is not contrary to sustainability.
Done responsibly, it is part of sustainability.
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