I think you raise a valid point and that is that fish stocks are mobile and we still don't completely understand their movements. On the flipside though the marine parks are just as much about protecting areas such as rare coral reef which are obviously not on the move. Also while I have not done any marine parks I would assume the marine parks are partly setup around known breeding grounds / regular haunts for protected species - which are typically the same every year (or every time they spawn).

Cheers,

Buschy

Planning may be hard, so lets all do no planning? WIN!!!!!

Come back when you have a point, not just an axe to grind.

Of course pelagics move around and even the greenies know that.

...it's a bit of a reach to compare marlin/mackerel appearances in Geo Bay to redistrubution of plaice stocks in the North Sea. While till is researching that ICES thing you're on about maybe you should google "La Nina" since that is the most likely reason we've had such warm water down the coast this year, not climate change.

Ok, you went to Jessica's meeting and you've also been fishing/existing in and around Geographe Bay for 50 years. You've got one up on just about every one else on this forum on this particular subject. But if she only talked about fish stocks and said nothing about biodiversity, she's not even addressing half the picture. Have you considered that fish stocks might RELY on biodiversity? If you take away corals/reef/vegetation, would that not effect the fish life in the area? If you dredge up seagrass how would stocks of KG whiting/squid/blue swimmer crabs/etc be affected?

So a lack of dive flags means the area is not on a par with the Great Barrier Reef, and by your reasoning, not worthy of any sort of marine park status. Vast areas of weed/seagrass are not on most divers' "to do" lists...you'd see most flags at the Swan wreck or Busso jetty...but this seagrass is absolutely vital to the marine ecosystem. If you cruised a boat 50 miles down the Amazon and didn't see anybody, would you then say "not unique" and dam it up for some hydroelectricity?

Do we know if pink snapper breed in the bay? Maybe they do, maybe they don't...if we don't know, maybe we should find out. I've dived the Swan wreck probably four times over the years and each time the number of large fish (dhus, baldies, snapper, sambos, mulloway, blue groper) has declined, and last time (two years ago) the only big fish I saw were 5 or 6 samsons. I recall a diver posting a pic on here of a dead sambo wedged under one of the ship's bulkheads with 30m of fishing line trailing out of its gob. In a 300 metre fishing exclusion zone. So Geo Bay, like everywhere else, has its unsavoury element too.

If climate change is indeed causing fish stocks to redistribute, then that is for the scientists to determine. Like you, I don't know if they're capable of that. This Meeuwig person might just want to slap down a marine park anywhere she wants without doing the proper research. Maybe all the fish will redistribute themselves to where her boyfriend's oil reserves are...then we KNOW they won't be protected! But we can't view the movements of migratory pelagic fish or lack of diver activity as the primary gauge of what's happening in an area. There's a lot more to it than that.

Another Rachel Seiwert, hell bent on getting into politics I'd say.

I used to Dive Geographe bay heaps when I lived in Busso, never put a flag up because we found when we did knobheads would come over and sniff around. There thinking was if its worth diving its worth having for ourselves.

Just a heads up, its not a dessert that bay, lots of fish, coral etc, just most of it is very low to the bottom and hard to find with a sounder if your not sure what your looking for.

I perhaps should have mentioned this before but I regard myself  also as a diver because every year I dive for crays in the bay and know exactly what is out there but if I made comment some might consider it as being bias just to support my argument . I consider the comments from" auslobster "probably closer to the mark and supported by siesmic maps that was done 12 years ago to establish if there was any chance of there being gas reserves in the bay like on land.