Hear Hear Bill, sadly I doubt it as it seems the Fisheries Wardens role is just to ‘Show the Flag’and maybe scare some recreational fishermen as I don’t know any Fishermen who worry about seeing them pull up alongside.

Sadly I don’t see much changing unless the boards make ups are changed to include more input from other ‘stakeholders, failing that its likely to be more of the same.

Besides you can always go “look” for minerals and shipwrecks under a research permit. Then IF something amazing is found you can, as a nation, decide how to exploit it beneficially.

Of course, we could always get a spy drone.

Read the Government’s consultation document, that of the Blue Halo and the Sargasso Sea Alliance before spouting off such hyperbole!

The 50 to 200nm you claim is just deep blue ocean makes up an important part of the Sargasso Sea!

Educate yourself ‘FFS’!

But there are other important reasons to promote ocean conservation beyond economics. If you remove top predators, such as the grouper and shark, you change the structure of the ecosystem. The change can be dramatic and sometimes irreversible.

Yes, there are other issues including the lionfish invasion that you should know about by now. We have lionfish in our waters, potentially the most serious threat to our reef ever. They eat all our baby fish, have venomous spines and no natural predators besides man. What would you have the community do? Lay down and do nothing? No. There’s a control plan in place and nearly two dozen organizations make up a Taskforce and we are all doing our best to try and keep their numbers in check. Some organizations are working hard to raise awareness while others are actually putting on dive gear and combing our reef on our time spearing them one by one so that our children can enjoy the same diversity we see today in the future.

We have a marine debris problem with plastic pollution. You cannot walk a beach without navigating around trash or scoop up a handful of sand completely free of small plastic confetti, cigarette butts or plastic bottle caps. As a community, what do we do? Ignore it, hope it goes away and do nothing? No. There is another Taskforce made up of many organizations and individuals that are actively identifying and removing debris from our beaches all the time. Plastic in our ocean is a huge, huge problem.

Will we wake up one day and find all the lionfish and invasive species gone and all the plastic pollution and marine debris out of the ocean and off our beaches? No. Can we lay down and do nothing despite the size and scope of the tasks realizing that there is no end and we’ll be hunting lionfish and potentially picking up plastic from the beaches forever? No. We have to do something.

I, for one, will not witness the destruction and collapse of our ecosystem and when my kids grow up and see what was done ON OUR WATCH tell them I did nothing and was too busy to care. Some of you might be okay with that. Not me.

Weldon Wade

A fish is worth tons more alive than on a plate.