I had my 10 minutes of fame last week as I was powdered up and thrust before the cameras for TVNZ7’s Media7 special on science and the media. A really fun experience, but there was some kind of weird time-absorbing phenomenon going on in the TVNZ studio that seemed to reduce my time to about 10 seconds.

Before I went up to Auckland for the filming I dutifully did my research and went around talking to some scientists I know that have had a fair bit of media coverage. I asked them about their experiences, and why they think it is that journalists sometimes struggle with reporting science, and some scientists struggle with talking to the media. I got so much great information. And then managed to blather away my precious screen time talking about a potential market for hagfish-skin t-shirts. Seriously, where does this stuff come from?! Shudder.

So, here is my chance to say what I should have said. I particularly want to share with you an analogy that my doctoral supervisor shared with me (that he had in turn been told by a mentor in the US). He likened science to law. As scientists, we prepare a theory, and then test it by gathering evidence – much as lawyers do. Our evidence (data) varies in the weight that can be placed upon it: we have qualitative studies and observations (think of this as circumstantial evidence), and we have quantitative data (cold hard facts). But – and herein lies the difference – when a scientist’s “case” is reported in the media, there is no standard framework or rules around how those different kinds of evidence are presented. More often than not, science stories are reported with little concept of the weighting that can be given to a particular piece of scientific information. And so we end up with the risk of the scientific conclusions being overstated or taken out of context.

If a reporter of a criminal law trial treated circumstantial evidence (“Suspect X was seen outside the crime scene at 4:55 am, 5 minutes before the victim is believed to have died…”) as cold hard facts (“…and is therefore the murderer”), they would likely be sued/reprimanded/sacked. Were that same reporter to overstate the bounds of scientific data, they would probably just end up looking a little lazy.

So, how do scientists cope with this? They adopt their own internal framework for presenting their data. You’ve seen this before: excessive use of “maybes” and “possiblys” and “likelys” and “coulds”. The result: quite often a dithering, indecisive, dispassionate stuffy scientist. I hate to say it but it’s true!

It all comes down to how scientists present the uncertainty and caveats that surround their research. There has to be a way for scientists to do this without turning it into a dry sleep-inducing event. For some, the ability to do this comes very naturally, and for the others – well, practise practise practise!

Perhaps if more scientists can perfect the skill of presenting their science whilst dealing with scientific uncertainty, it might lead to more captivating science stories in the media.

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A top programme – Media7’s Spotlight

How the media lost interest in Climategate

It is now possible to explore the deep sea without having to leave the couch. No need to get cold and cramped sitting for hours inside the confined space of a submersible.

NIWA have just released an incredible online resource of seafloor images covering the whole of New Zealand’s Exclusive Economic Zone. Have you ever wondered what lies beneath the blue as you have flown over Cook Strait? Did you know that there is a massive network of undersea canyons off Otago? And have you ever realized just how quickly you can plunge into the deep ocean just off the coast of Fiordland? It is also very cool to explore the abyssal Pyuseger and Kermadec trenches that mark the fault line to the south and north of the country.

I am often awed by how little we know about the marine area that makes up more than 90% of our country! But then on the other hand, perhaps the fact that much of this approximately four million square kilometers of seafloor is classified as “deep sea” provides a pretty good excuse. One of our resident deep sea explorers Peter Batson published an excellent book called Deep New Zealand: Blue Water, Black Abyss a few years ago. This, or his website www.exploretheabyss.com is a must see if you want to learn more and see some beautiful photos and drawings of crazy deep sea life forms.

NIWA has only just launched these maps and it seems there are a few small teething issues – for now to download you can right click, open the link in a new window/tab, then save each image. For those interested in how the seabed in such deep areas is mapped, there is great information here.

I have been watching with interest the developments over on the West Coast as the local community moves closer to becoming the first to implement a regional marine protection framework under the Marine Protected Areas Policy and Implementation Plan.

About a year ago, the West Coast Marine Protection Forum released a consultation document and called for submissions. This document represented a huge effort by a number of different stakeholders, who had been researching, consulting and debating on the issues around this enormous task since 2005. Having taken a year to consider 1300 submissions, the Forum has recently made recommendations to the Ministers of Conservation and Fisheries about the approach to marine protection over an area that extends all the way from Kahurangi in the north, to south of Jackson’s Bay.

Whilst the Forum has successfully managed to agree upon the locations of four marine protected areas (MPAs), they were unable to reach a consensus about the boundaries of these and the levels of marine protection within each. So instead of presenting the Ministers with a decisive and cohesive package of protected areas, they have provided two or three options for each site. These typically consist of an option that is not far removed from that in the consultation document (2009), and then one or two alternative options that are heavily influenced by either the commercial fishing sector or environmental interests. Not surprisingly, the “fishing option” is reduced in size and/or the level of protection (such as allowing some types of fishing to carry on), and the “environmental option” typically incorporates a larger area with a higher proportion of that to be no take marine reserve.

Perhaps the most extreme example of the influence of commercial fishers versus environmentalists is the MPA at Kahurangi. Here, Option A covers an area of 665 km², and extends from the tide line to about 20 km offshore. Option B, which wasn’t presented in the original consultation document, covers 85 km² and extends 5 km offshore. Sorry, but I’m not taking any bets on who influenced Option B.

The Forum has stated that due to the conflicting views both within the Forum and from submitters, they were unable to reach a consensus about the boundaries and protection levels at each site. So it will be very interesting to see how the Ministers respond to such polarized recommendations – surely they have to give a very high weighting to the target of 10% of the New Zealand marine environment being protected?

The commercial fishing sector has apparently argued that without some form of financial compensation for reduced fishing grounds, the industry is in effect giving without receiving any form of gain. The Gifts versus Gains approach was central to making progress by the Guardians of Fiordland’s Fisheries and the Marine Environment, and in my view requires all involved to take a step back and look at the big picture. For the fishers, rather than looking merely at the reduction in fishable area as potential lost income, perhaps they could consider the gains that are likely in terms of improved chances of long term sustainability of fisheries due to the many proven benefits of MPAs for fisheries (such as providing refuge for adults and protected space for juveniles).

Whatever the outcome, there are some very positive aspects to the Forum’s recommendations from a scientific perspective. The first of these, is that the area of the West Coast under marine reserve protection is definitely going to increase. Without a doubt. Currently with a huge 0% (she says sarcastically) of the coastal area in marine reserves, things can only improve from here.

In my opinion, one of the coolest things about the proposed MPAs is their proximity to National Parks. All of the four proposed MPA sites are situated alongside National Parks, and this will provide for a continuum of protection from, in many cases, the tops of mountains, to the depths of the sea. If Option B at the Gorge site is accepted, it will be the first MPA in the country to provide protection from the tide line to the edge of the continental shelf, where underwater canyons abound. Ecologists have increasingly been demonstrating the importance of such connectivity for processes including the movement of energy and animals, and the functioning of lovely healthy ecosystems that extend far beyond the immediate environment. Yes, that reef you’re snorkeling on is vulnerable to the state of the environment up in the hills, and to some extent vice versa.

I could rabbit on about marine protection and the situation on the West Coast for ages… Oh whoops, it seems I already have! But as you may have guessed, this is an area I’m particularly passionate about. Time for you guys to put your two cents in – I look forward to your comments and questions. Anything that gives me an opportunity to write more…

Related Posts:

Community based marine management in practice – the West Coast example

10% by 2010? Yeah right!

I have perfected the art of ‘purposeful stops’ when I’m out running. It’s nothing that countless runners before me haven’t mastered – the sudden need to tighten a shoelace or stretch that hamstring… Unfortunately the laces on my new shoes are annoyingly well behaved, and so I have been conjuring up other excuses to take a break, like staring intently at some small plant on the side of the track, trying very hard to look like an interested botanist should someone pass by. The other day, on a track near Dunedin I stopped and gazed purposefully upwards to the forest canopy. And what I saw surprised me – most of the leaves were full of holes and were all raggedy around the edges. It seemed that a lot of bugs had been hard at work.

It reminded me of a study that was published in the journal Ecology a few months ago where the question was asked Do trees grow faster in the presence of birds? Many birds obviously feed on insects and these scientists wanted to know whether this predation had a measurable impact on the number of insects and the growth rate of the trees. The reasoning being that leaf loss due to insect munching causes lower rates of photosynthesis, and sap-sucking insects incur a further energetic cost. Sounds like a simple enough question, until you consider the logistics involved with excluding birds from 7 meter high spruce trees!

The ecologists measured and compared tree growth rates between trees to which birds had full access, and those covered by bird-netting (effectively bird-exclusion zones). After a year it was found that more often than not, bird-excluded trees had slower growth rates and around 60% more insect herbivores on them.

New Zealand has suffered a dramatic and well documented decline of native birds. I began to wonder whether ecologists here have ever tried to quantify the potential impact of this decline on the health of our native forests. Here we are all worrying about possums! Could out-of-control insects be doing more damage?

Dave Kelly, an Associate Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Canterbury University has spent many years researching the ecology of New Zealand forests. He emphasized that studies around the world looking at relationships between bird abundance and tree health do not have very consistent findings, and was quick to point out the complexities of this issue here in New Zealand. True, many of our forest dwelling native birds have declined, but in many cases their ecological role as insect predators may have been taken over by birds such as chaffinches and blackbirds that were introduced by European settlers. “Some of these exotic insect-eating birds get deep into native forest, so I suspect the insectivore guild of birds is still well represented in most parts of New Zealand despite the big changes in avifauna.”

Dr Kelly isn’t aware of any similar bird-exclusion studies being carried out here and perhaps this isn’t so surprising – it would be near impossible to carry out a well replicated bird exclusion experiment on our forest giants. But there is evidence that insect herbivory is impacting our native plants. For example, the threatened native mistletoe – thought to be in decline due to pressure from possums – actually loses more leaf area to insects than possums on an annual basis. Now, this isn’t to say that possums don’t love tucking into mistletoe. But, be it possums or insects that are to blame for our stressed-out forests, it could be argued that the solution is essentially the same. Insect-eating birds such as kaka, tomtit, fantails and robins have declined in response to predation by introduced mammals, including possums that feed upon eggs. So, controlling possum numbers should lead not only to less forest being consumed by them, but also to an increase in bird numbers and perhaps more natural control on those ravenous insects.

I thought I’d leave the last word to an author of a recent review on bird-tree relationships published in the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences:

“In sum, many investigations in terrestrial and aquatic habitats, both natural and human-dominated, find that bird predation decreases invertebrate prey populations. Most studies that examined cascading effects of birds on plants found them, in some cases, with positive economic consequences for humans. In stark contrast, bird persecution may have devastating consequences. Although information is only anecdotal, apparently the “war against the sparrows,” part of a pest-control campaign launched in China during Mao Zedong’s Great Leap Forward, led to massive increases in pest insects and, thus, crop damage, ultimately contributing to a catastrophic famine from 1958–1962 in which 30 million Chinese died from starvation.” [C. J. Whelan, et. al., Ecosystem Services Provided by Birds, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1134: 25–60 (2008)]

Sometimes I curse being an environmental scientist. Particularly when I’m traveling overseas. While my fellow travelers gaze in awe at the natural wonders around them, I can’t help but see signs of pollution and degradation. I have just returned from a stint in Vietnam where I visited a World Heritage Area. It really got me thinking…

When UNESCO (the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization) awards World Heritage Status to a natural environment, tourist numbers soar. Visitors turn up expecting to find unparalleled beauty, and I suspect a pristine, possibly wilderness-type experience. Should these tourists come to Tongariro or Fiordland National Parks – the “jewels in the crown” of New Zealand tourism – they are likely to find exactly that. But is that the case at World Heritage sites in other parts of the world? At what point does increased tourism actually have detrimental effects on the very environments that UNESCO intends to protect?

Ha Long Bay in northern Vietnam is marketed as “the most beautiful place in the world”. I figured this was a place I just had to see. What I found was a landscape very much reminiscent of southern Fiordland. But… a Fiordland that you might expect to find just before the world ends. Thousands of bush-clad islands with toxic plastic-laden waters lapping at the shores. Steep cliffs extending upwards into the haze created by nearby coal-fired powerstations. Sea eagles swooping down to inspect discarded nappies and plastic flotsam. And everywhere, everywhere (!) an endless procession of tourist boats spewing out raw sewerage and diesel fumes.

Tourist boats jostle to unload passengers at Ha Long Bay, Vietnam. Photo: Rebecca McLeod

I don’t mean to sound like a doomsdayer, but I was incredibly upset by my experience in Ha Long Bay. By all accounts this area was not so heavily polluted even ten years ago. But rapid development throughout Vietnam and skyrocketing tourism seem to be taking their toll.

The objective of World Heritage Status is to encourage conservation of the area, by empowering local communities to improve management practices, and where needed to provide assistance should the area become at risk of degradation. The dramatic increase in tourism that often accompanies the addition of a site to the World Heritage List could perhaps be regarded as an unintentional consequence of enlistment. But the lobbying that goes on behind the scenes shows that national governments are all to aware of the financial benefits that come with having sites in their country added to the list. The UNESCO process is transparent, and reports available on the website document current concerns about the negative impacts of tourism in Ha Long Bay. In the latest document (2009), the UNESCO council requested that tourist numbers to Ha Long Bay be regulated and the tourism-associated environmental impacts monitored. Unfortunately I saw no evidence of visitor restrictions – our boat left the dock with at least 20 other boats for company, and there were always at least ten boats in sight.

Never wanting for company - and this was the quiet season! Photo: Rebecca McLeod

It could be argued that such negative implications of World Heritage status are only likely to occur in developing nations where environmental practices are largely unregulated. However, we don’t have to look far to find an example of a World Heritage Area in a developed country that is suffering degradation due to its popularity with tourists.

Fraser Island, in Queensland, Australia has been on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1992, and since that time tourism has increased rapidly to an estimated half a million visitors a year. The majority of these tourists explore the sandy island by driving four wheel drive vehicles along the beaches. At night, the vehicles are driven up into the sand dunes, where camps are set up. Although there are established camping sites complete with toilet facilities, the quest for a true wilderness experience sees many visitors camping in non-designated areas. Perhaps this wouldn’t be a problem if we were only talking a small number of tourists. But unfortunately half a million visitors a year driving their vehicles into the dunes is taking its toll. The dunes are suffering from destruction, areas are becoming nutrient-enriched, and the roar of 4WDs is detracting from the wilderness experience.

In principle I agree with what UNESCO is trying to achieve and I believe that the council has good intentions. The fact is, there are places on Earth that are so stunningly beautiful, so unique, and so vulnerable that a global approach to protection seems the only way forward. I just hope that the countries lucky enough to be the guardians of these places realize that are they to benefit from tourism in the long term, they need to control the way that tourism is conducted so that the natural beauty and value of these sites is not compromised.

I felt very privileged to MC the Realise the Dream celebratory awards dinner at Te Papa last night. Unfortunately, it seems that all of the (much deserved) attention given to the Prime Minister’s Science Awards recipients on Tuesday has resulted in this very special event, which celebrates the rather staggering scientific achievements of secondary scholars, flying somewhat under the media radar.

There are so many opportunities for kids to get amongst science at school these days – the Bright Sparks programme, the Science Fair, the CREST programme, the Freemason’s Reel Science Film Festival, among many others. Realise the Dream in a way acts as an umbrella over these initiatives, taking top achievers from each, treating them to an action packed science camp in December, and then wrapping it up with the much anticipated Awards Night.

The top prize, the Genesis Energy Supreme Award, went to an outstanding student from Onslow College, Stanley Roache. Stanley explored and later modeled the phenomenon of coloured rings that are visible when you look down the end of highly polished metal tubes. This guy blew me away – not only does he have an incredible grasp of physics, he can also really hold his own in front of a crowd, as evidenced by his totally unscripted and very sincere acceptance speech. And this was no school assembly! Dotted around the room were the Governor General, the Minister of Science, the Chancellor of Massey University, the Prime Minister’s 2010 Emerging Scientist John Watt, Chief Executives of high-powered companies…. you get the picture.

If you get a spare moment and feel like a good dose of inspiration, go to the Realise the Dream website and learn more about the incredible research projects that these students have done – you’ll learn about the invention of a remote control lawnmower, developments in the treatment of mastitis in dairy cows, a device to transfer data directly between memory sticks, ways for parents to monitor their children’s internet usage and how temperature influences the feeding rate of bees. But I must warn you: be prepared to feel rather inadequate – I certainly did when I thought back to my school science project – trying to figure out which chicken was the boss in our paddock…

Hmmm, perhaps not quite as catchy as “Save the Whales”… but there are other marine species out there that we should care about too, no matter how uncuddly they may be.

At a global level, New Zealand is regarded to have some of the most well managed fisheries. Here, most exploited species are managed under the Quota Management System (QMS), which regulates the total catch for each species. But you may be surprised to know that not all marine species are managed in this way – there are some which, as a consequence of their exclusion from the QMS, are effectively “open access fisheries”.  Commercial fishers still need to have permits to take these species, but there is no apparent limit as to how many permits can be handed out.

The reason these species (think seahorses, cat’s eyes and sea anemones) are not in the QMS is because they are not considered to be desirable as fishery targets. But as times change, so do appetites for the weird and wonderful. For example, the Ministry of Fisheries has recently entered giant kelp into the QMS, as there is potential for the kelp to be used as feed in paua farms and in the pharmaceutical industry. I have blogged on this contentious issue previously.

But today I would like to draw your attention to the plight of the lowly hagfish (aka the snot eel). Whilst it appears that the western world is only interested in hagfish for entertainment purposes (an episode of Fear Factor comes to mind), they are much sought after by asian markets where the flesh is eaten and the skin made into designer leather (marketed as eel skin). The high demand for hagfish coupled with unregulated fisheries led to complete collapse of fisheries in Southeast Asia in the 1980’s, the West Coast of the United States in the 1990’s, followed by the East Coast in the early 2000’s. For now the New Zealand population appears to be in a good state, although perhaps not for long according to our sole resident hagfish expert, Dr Ric Martini. “There has never been a sustainable commercial fishery for these animals anywhere in the world, and there’s no reason New Zealand should be an exception.”

Kiss anyone? New Zealand's most common hagfish, Eptatretus cirrhatus. Photo: Stephen Wing

Four years ago one company, Tuere Fishing Ltd. of Christchurch, began small-scale commercial hagfish fishing in New Zealand coastal waters. Although the venture hasn’t been wildly successful, it continues to operate and interest in Korea has been sufficient to attract a second company operating out of Tauranga. Dr Martini is concerned that the fishery here is currently unregulated. “The startup fishery got the attention of the Korean buyers, and now others are moving into the market. Without regulatory oversight, we risk a “gold-rush” fishery, where multiple companies capitalize heavily to maximize their catch.  Experience suggests that the boats will get larger and more numerous and landings will skyrocket while the catch per unit effort declines, and then in 3-5 years the fishery will collapse.”

But who cares about a stinking, slimy fish that lives at the depths of the ocean?

Although very little is known about the biology of our most common species, Eptatretus cirrhatus, it appears that they play a key role in deep sea ecosystems – as a food source for large fish and marine mammals, as key scavengers of carrion and as aerators of deep sea sediment. Dr Martini has counted upwards of 325,000 hagfish in a square kilometer! Yes, you read this correctly, three hundred and twenty-five THOUSAND. Surely at densities this high, hagfish must have a high impact on their habitat and interact with other species that live there.

The likelihood of sustainable management of a fishery increases with the knowledge of the target species. Unfortunately for hagfish, very little is known about even the most basic life history characteristics such as growth rates, breeding grounds, embryo development, age structure of the population, or natural mortality rates. But we do know that they reproduce slowly – females produce only 20-40 large eggs that take 1-2 years to produce, and another year to develop into young hagfish. So they are certain to be at least as vulnerable to overfishing as the pelagic sharks – and fisheries for sharks have proven to be extremely difficult to manage sustainably. It would be prudent, then, to treat the burgeoning New Zealand hagfish fishery with great care.

A good place to begin, according to Dr Martini, would be to undertake some baseline surveys around New Zealand to estimate the size of the population. This information, combined with improved knowledge of basic life history characteristics would form the basis for management of the fishery. However, there are steps that can be taken in the meantime whilst that information is being collected. Faced with similar regulatory uncertainties, the Canadian Department of Fisheries and Oceans has classified hagfish as an “experimental fishery.” This involves issuing a limited number of permits (for example, only one vessel is permitted to fish for hagfish in water offshore from British Columbia), making escape holes in pots mandatory to allow juveniles to escape, collecting catch data, and encouraging collaboration with scientists to research the life history of these animals and to detect any changes in the hagfish population as the fishery operates. The Canadian program is an appropriate model for New Zealand to adopt, as it would allow the fishery to develop under tightly controlled conditions that protect the resource.

As pressure mounts on the New Zealand hagfish fishery it is important that the Ministry of Fisheries reconsider the status of hagfish in our waters, and move towards regulating the extraction of this vulnerable species – experience shows that if we continue on our current course, this fishery is headed for collapse!

I have always believed that we need to work hard to try and keep things as they are – to keep the environment in a “natural state”. But perhaps as the world we live in begins to change dramatically, so too should my thinking. I recently attended a seminar by Professor Terry Chapin, President Elect of the Ecological Society of America. Professor Chapin told the audience, who were mostly ecologists, that we need to shift our mindset – we need to start thinking of ways that we can modify the landscape to make humans more resilient to a changing climate.

Professor Terry Chapin, President Elect of the Ecological Society of America

Whilst public debate continues about the validity of the science in the IPCC reports, animals and plants – apparently oblivious to all the chit chat – are changing their distributions on a massive scale. As the climate warms, butterflies, sea urchins and fishes, to name just a few, are moving further towards the poles. Marine animals are inhabiting deeper depths as water warms, and land plants and animals are living at higher altitudes. Along with these shifts in range come implications for humans – inevitably we will be forced to change the way we fish, hunt, farm, obtain water and interact with our environment.

Professor Chapin has been working in the Alaskan interior, investigating the effects of wildfires on forests and the humans who live among them. Wildfires are naturally occurring in these parts and have been a feature of the region for at least the last 6000 years. But what has changed recently is the frequency and intensity of the fires, with lots of fires breaking out in ever more common hot, dry years. Another shift over the past few decades has been the movement of indigenous people from small, nomadic communities, to larger more permanent towns. Where once, people used to move in response to fires, the fires now have the potential to cause major disruption and threat to communities.

There are two main forest types in the Alaskan back blocks – black spruce, which is fire prone and is associated with permafrost, and broadleaf forest, which is less flammable. After particularly severe fires in black spruce forests, broadleaf forests tend to regenerate. However, in some of the drier regions, it is possible that forest may not regenerate, with the land converting to grassland. And so it seems likely that the Alaskan landscape is likely to change dramatically in the future if the high frequency of wildfires continues. Large scale changes in plant coverage like this will affect numbers and distribution of wild animals such as caribou, which provide an important food source. The indigenous people are strongly linked to the land and the landscape is set to drastically change.

Fire consumes black spruce forest

Professor Chapin is proposing that Alaskans take an active role in modifying the landscape around them, to protect them from the consequences of wildfires. Maybe this could involve harvesting forests that surround townships to decrease the fire risk. Fighting fires is an expensive business – perhaps large scale changes in landuse could lower the costs.

I have to say that these ideas make me more than a little uncomfortable. Maybe it’s my inner tree-hugger coming out… Surely the ESA aren’t encouraging us to cut down forests?! A quick read of a recent position statement from the society “Ecosystem Management in a Changing Climate” was somewhat comforting.

“Ecosystems are already responding to climate change. Continued warming—some of which is now unavoidable—may impair the ability of many such systems to provide critical resources and services like food, clean water, and carbon sequestration. Buffering against the impacts of climate change will require new strategies to both mitigate the extent of change and adapt to changes that are inevitable. The sooner such strategies are deployed, the more effective they will be in reducing irreversible damage.

Ecosystems can be managed to limit and adapt to both the near- and long-term impacts of climate change. Strategies that focus on restoring and maintaining natural ecosystem function (reducing deforestation, for example) are the most prudent; strategies that drastically alter ecosystems may have significant and unpredictable impacts.”

It seems that the extent to which we should physically modify landscapes (versus allowing changes to occur without intervention) will need to be assessed on a case by case basis. One thing that is certain is that ecologists have a vital role in predicting future ecosystem-level changes, and advising how to make humans more resilient to changing environments. The role of the ecologist is moving beyond describing ecosystems and investigating how they function. Ecologists will increasingly be turned to for guidance on adaptive solutions to climate change.

The South Island’s West Coast Marine Protection Forum looks set to be the first region to put a marine protected area (MPA) proposal to the Government under the new(ish) MPA Policy and Implementation Plan, with the group recently wrapping up an extensive consultation process. The proposal that was put out for public comment outlined four main sites and five smaller areas for a range of protection measures including marine reserves and fisheries act protected areas, contained within the area from just north of Karamea to just south of Haast. More than 1100 submissions were received, signaling that New Zealanders really care about this relatively remote part of the country.

The proposed network of marine protected areas that was put out for public consultation last year

The process has been a lengthy one with the forum, which includes a wide range of stakeholders (fishers, iwi, environmental groups, tourism etc.), being established five years ago. The MPA Policy and Implementation Plan encourages a community-based approach to marine management, and was established following the successful introduction of the Fiordland Marine Management Area by the stakeholder group The Guardians of Fiordland in 2005. The Labour-led Government obviously believed that this community-led initiative was more likely to result in successful MPA introductions than the traditional “top down” approach where the Department of Conservation (DoC) proposed sites for future reserves and often faced intense public opposition.

Whilst I am very supportive of the new approach, I have in the past voiced concerns about the degree to which scientific knowledge of the marine environment will be considered during the decision making process. I was initially quite alarmed to see that the West Coast Forum did not contain any marine scientists. However, a trawl through the minutes of the forum meetings revealed that members did indeed seek advice and briefings from scientists including those from DoC, the Ministry of Fisheries and NIWA. Scientists nationwide were also given the opportunity to comment during the public consultation process. The West Coast forum was established prior to the new policy, and so future regional groups will be required to have at least one scientist on each committee.

Being a remote and wild stretch of coast, it is perhaps not surprising that the level of scientific knowledge and understanding about marine life and ecosystem functioning in this region is not as high as other parts of the country. In days gone, opponents used such knowledge gaps to argue against marine protection. The new system is based on habitat classification, as it is widely accepted that species assemblages are largely predicted by physical features of habitat such as substratum type (sand, reef etc.) and water depth. Such information is relatively easy to obtain, and a spread of MPAs among different habitat types makes protection more inclusive, and provides for species that migrate among different habitat types during their life cycle. The proposal on the West Coast therefore includes, among other habitats, estuaries, coastal and offshore reefs and sand flats.

The West Coast process is far from settled – now that the submissions have been analyzed, the proposal will be modified accordingly prior to being submitted to Minter’s of Fisheries and Conservation for consideration. The members of this forum deserve credit for putting in the years of hard work, debate and consultation. Unfortunately, on a national level we are far from 10% by 2010, but at least things are moving in the right direction.

In light of recent marine protection developments on the South Island’s West Coast, I have reposted a piece I wrote for the Science Media Centre back in 2008. I will write more soon about the West Coast – I am still trying to figure out the extent to which scientific information guided the decision making process there.

I recently went to a talk by Kim Hill entitled “Is science something we should fear?”

Being a scientist, I thought Kim was joking. Why would the public not value and embrace the knowledge and lessons learned by people that in essence, spend their time trying to better understand and improve the world? It started me thinking about the role that scientists should have in guiding decisions about how we manage our environment, in particular our coastal marine areas.

New Zealand has an excellent reputation for marine conservation, due to initiatives including our quota management system and the growing numbers of marine reserves. The Government is currently developing a framework that will essentially allow locals to decide how they want marine protection measures to proceed around their coasts.

This move is occurring partly in response to very vocal opposition to proposed marine reserves in some parts of the country. The idea is that by involving the community in the decision process, people will have a vested interest in the outcomes, resulting in a higher level of support for the introduced protection measures.

The framework for these local groups will be similar to that of the Fiordland Marine Guardians; a group of “stakeholders” (e.g. fishers, tangata whenua, tourism operators etc.), who proposed a series of conservation measures to be established in the fjords. Following many years of discussion, negotiation, and compromise, the Guardians presented a proposal to Parliament in 2003, and in 2005 the Fiordland Marine Management Act was established. The protection measures include 10 marine reserves, reductions in recreational quota, and restrictions on commercial fishing areas, anchoring etc. These decisions were guided by the expert opinion and knowledge of a marine ecologist from Otago University.

In February 2008 the Department of Conservation and the Ministry of Fisheries released an implementation strategy for this new regional approach to marine management. The document outlines how a forum of up to 14 stakeholders will be appointed in each of the defined regions in NZ. These stakeholders will encompass tangata whenua, commercial fishers, recreational users, conservation groups, tourism operators, aquaculture industry, minerals industry… and scientists.

It will be the task of each forum to reach a consensus on areas to be proposed for marine protection, and make recommendations of what the protection measures should involve. Each of the stakeholders will have equal status in discussions and decision-making. This is the part that concerns me.

Processes that occur in the marine environment and marine ecosystems are inherently complex and can vary significantly over small distances, and also over time. The effectiveness of protection measures are likely to be dependent upon what they consist of, where they are placed, and how big an area they cover.

For example, in the fjords it appears that the new marine reserves are differing in their ability to “recover”. In Doubtful Sound, we have found that changes in crayfish numbers can be related to the amount of food that is available at each location. Near the output of the Manapouri hydroelectric power station, where increased freshwater has led to a decline in mussels and other clams (crayfish food), crayfish are not recovering.

In contrast, in other marine reserves where there is plenty of crayfish food, crayfish numbers are rapidly increasing. This is just one of many examples that demonstrate the success of a marine protected area (MPA) can vary significantly depending on its location, shape and size.

Whilst it is incredibly important to have the support of the local community for MPAs, it is equally, if not more important to get the characteristics of the MPA correct in the first place. Otherwise, it is possible that no amount of protection will lead to “recovery” of the marine ecosystem. To increase the likelihood of designing an MPA that is going to be effective, management recommendations put forward by the regional forums need to critically evaluate all reliable knowledge and data pertaining to the marine environment in question.

And keep in mind that this information will not necessarily come solely from scientists. The extensive local knowledge of other interested parties such as fishers and tangata whenua has a large role to play here too. My point is that debate and negotiation from all interested parties should be based upon the best available knowledge, and where available, data.

To provide advice about how to design effective MPAs, scientists need answers to questions such as: What lives there? How fast do things grow and how much do they move around? Where does the food come from that is supporting the community? Where do the young come from? Are there any ongoing impacts?

It is paramount that decisions regarding the placement and degree of MPAs are based upon such fundamental ecological knowledge, and you would be surprised just how little is known about these processes on a small scale around our coasts. So, to support management recommendations and decisions that will have a high likelihood of success, it is essential that the Government funds fundamental ecological research in our coastal seas.

Earlier I said that I was concerned about scientists being considered as stakeholders in these regional forums. These concerns are due to the fact that when it comes to deciding upon management recommendations, scientists will effectively have one 14th of the vote.

I am concerned that such a small influence will lead to expert scientific advice getting diluted. Ask any scientist that has witnessed or been involved in the process of the creation of an MPA: “was it big enough?” And they will invariably say “NO!” Because more often than not during the consultation and negotiation process, the size of the desirable MPA gets whittled down to a fraction of it’s former self.

The question to these scientists then becomes: “Do you think it will still work?” And that is where many scientists will have doubts. I strongly believe that whilst public consultation is very valuable and necessary, scientific knowledge and advice must not be diluted when it comes to making decisions about the future of marine management in New Zealand.

We are entering exciting times with respect to the marine environment. One hopes that in years to come, all New Zealanders will be able to take a short trip to their local marine reserve, and explore an intact and healthy marine ecosystem.

For this vision to become a reality, scientists need to get involved in their local communities and communicate science effectively, so that the public will begin to appreciate that science is definitely something to value, not fear.