A few weeks ago Australian authorities approved a plan to dump dredged mud within the Great Barrier Reef marine park so that deep-draft ships can reach the Abbot Point coal port in northern Queensland. Although the park is not a pristine area, and there are already places within the park where dredged material can be dumped, it is concerning to see an expansion of this practice. As described by Hutchings, Kingsford, and Hoegh-Guldberg in The Great Barrier Reef: Biology, Environment, and Management, higher turbidity due to greater sedimentation threatens coral by limiting light, smothering coral, limiting recruitment of early-stage coral, and increasing available food for crown-of-thorns starfish larvae. It is estimated that the newly approved dredging will dump about 106 cubic feet of mud into the park, which will certainly impact water turbidity in the surrounding area. An official statement from Park authorities stated that dredging at Abbot Point will cause significantly less damage that dredging at other locations, but earlier in January 233 scientists signed a letter to the marine park authority encouraging them to reject the plan. To me, this raises questions surrounding what information shapes the park authority’s decisions. In the article Marine ecosystem-based management: from characterization to implementation authors Arkema, Abramson, and Dewsbury point out that even in places where managers claim to use Ecosystem-Based Management (including the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park), the actual number of objectives and interventions that meet EBM criteria can be very low. In their study they found that a much higher percentage of “humans included in ecosystem” and “ecosystem goods and services” objectives were met than others, like “science-based” and “precautionary principle” objectives. It is important to remember that EBM is not an end in itself, but must be applied correctly and pursued in a balanced way in order to be truly effective. The dredging that will occur near the Great Barrier Reef may be an example of economic demands taking precedence over environmental concerns, despite the supposed use of Ecosystem-Based Management techniques.
Sources:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/armyengineersnorfolk/7656763776/
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_Great_Barrier_Reef.html?id=QsvCzxCs3gYC
http://bio.research.ucsc.edu/people/raimondi/labmeetingpapers/winter2007/arkema_etal.pdf