Lessons from Leigh and how marine reserves can fail By Dr J Floor Anthoni (2003) www.seafriends.org.nz/issues/cons/lessons.htm The goat Island marine reserve in Leigh, has been New Zealand's first. Created in a climate of opposition, it has become a very popular place while silently propagating the marine conservation message as it draws over 100,000 visitors per year. Schools arrive from far afield to give their students a taste of their marine heritage. But it also has shown its failings. This chapter explores all these issues in order to be able to create better marine reserves, and to manage them better too.

successes		Created as a place for scientific study, the reserve has inspired its many visitors. Being able to swim amongst thousands of friendly fishes, has first created awareness, then awe, followed by support for saving the sea. (on this page)
education		When the marine reserve was opened, education was never mentioned as a potential benefit. However, over time, as the environment around Auckland degraded further, schools chose to travel for two hours to find a place with marine life and clear water.
fish feeding		Feeding the fishes became the most popular activity inside the marine reserve, and reached problematic proportions. But stopping it altogether, created other problems.
size and shape		Choosing the right size and shape of any marine reserve is critical to its later success. There are important lessons to be learnt.
the access road		To cater for the increased amount of traffic to the beach, the Goat Island Road was upgraded, causing masses of mud to enter the marine reserve - yet nobody took action. Why?
coastal erosion		The land forms an integral part with the sea, particularly where run-off is dominant. The steep agricultural land around the reserve has suddenly begun eroding, with devastating effects.
poaching		When a marine reserve is successful, the fish stocks inside build up to the extent that they become hard to resist for poachers. It just pays to fish inside. Read the story of the sunken car wrecks.
policing		Local and visiting users are the best agents for policing the marine reserve but it can be annoying.
amenities		Amenities like parking, rubbish containers and toilets become more urgent as the reserve attracts more people. Marking the sea with buoys, moorings and markers is necessary.
science		The marine reserve protects scientific experiments, allowing scientists undisturbed study of the sea but recently, research became more and more politically focused. Monitoring is important for any marine reserve but it should focus on all species and whether the reserve's objectives are being met.
scientific pollution		When doing scientific experiments, it is often necessary to erect experimental structures on the shore or underwater, like cages, tiles, cables and so on. These structures have been left to rot, while leaving harmful obstacles for the visiting public.
management		It could be argued that a marine reserve could run itself, but wherever people congregate, some form of management is needed. The centrally led management of the Goat Island reserve has shown that it leaves much to be desired.
concessions		Concessions are not used yet but should they be introduced?
glass bottom boat		A glass bottom boat has become a popular way to experience the marine reserve, particularly for those unable to go into the water. Many consider it an excellent idea, but it interferes with the pleasures of others. What should one do?
outreach centre		The Marine Laboratory of the University of Auckland is not contented teaching university level science, and now plans to open an outreach centre for the public. Madness? "The planned Edith Winstone Blackwell Interpretive Centre will provide a facility for these visitors and also outreach programmes for primary and secondary school students, including local and Maori educational programmes."
related pages on this web site		To feed or not? Is feeding the fish inside a marine reserve a bad thing? An In-depth article (7p) Monitoring results from Goat Island: it doesn't look good but why is this information so hard to get? Why so little? (10p) The snapper-urchin-kelp myth: kelp invaded the urchin habitat, but did predators cause it? Science gone wrong. (6p) Questionable marine research from Leigh: the urchin barrens myth dissected and rebutted. Just bad science. Shocking. (43p) Myths about marine reseves: a long litany of propaganda, misconceptions, fallacies and plain lies about marine reserves. (big) Monitoring results of other marine reserves: the public is woefully misled by the Department of Conservation. A must-read. (23p)

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The Goat Island marine reserve was effectively New Zealand's first, and nobody could predict how it would develop further and how many more reserves would be needed. Remember that the Marine Reserves Act 1971 (MRA71) specifies clearly that the sole purpose of marine reserves is that of scientific research. By 1996, this Act was revised considerably, to include more reasons for having them, reflecting the change in thinking (MRA96). Internationally, marine reserves were increasingly seen as a tool for saving the marine environment in the face of failing fisheries management. The word insurance was often touted. Scientists from New Zealand and elsewhere travelled around the world to broadcast the success of the Goat Island marine reserve, using it as a success story, and this is how people overseas know it, as the failures of the reserve were kept secret.

Indeed, the public rated the reserve successful. After about ten years of a luke-warm reception, visitor numbers suddenly started to increase since about 1988, as people learned to enjoy the sea without a need of catching fish. It changed their attitudes, finding out that fish can be enjoyed more intensively in a non-extractive, and completely sustainable way. But it happened by feeding the fish, which became tame and numerous because of this. The clusters of fish taking food from visitors attracted other fish which were attracted by safety in numbers. The number of visitors at one stage rose above 140,000 per year. People arrived in bus loads to feed the blue maomao and snapper in a channel off Hormosira Flats.

Originally attracted by the thrill of feeding the fishes, people could not avoid reading the information displays about marine life and marine conservation. It taught people more about the underwater environment. Schools began to include marine reserves in their curricula using the very biased information provided by the Department of Conservation..
 

f013008: View of the almost non-existent Goat Island beach at low tide. People also used the grassed areas. Many people are standing in knee-deep water to feed the friendly fishes.

f007701: During calm days with clear water, the sea becomes an underwater paradise with tame fish at close distance. Here is Mr Perfect, a large snapper which  stayed resident for many years.

To the casual visitor at least, the marine reserve looked successful as evidenced by the many fish close to the beach. Scientists also measured an increase in fish numbers, which they took as proof that marine reserves are working. However, in this chapter, some of the more unsuccessful (and often invisible) aspects of the marine reserve will be shown by someone who has lived here since the beginning of this marine reserve, while making frequent dives with movie and still cameras, and training students in its waters.
 
 

f015819: the shallow, warm rock pools are popular by children and adults alike, but their being trodden on causes damage to the shore environment. However, the deeper and cooler part of the rock pool, in the foreground, has been left undisturbed.

f015820: The rock pools attract children to the never ending adventure of discovering what lives there. Here a boy is attracting shrimps and triplefins with food.

f015200: particularly for people who are new to New Zealand, fish watching and feeding became a totally new experience.

The school visits also made visible the damage done by people to the sensitive reefs in the intertidal zone. Towards the end of each season, there is just less to see. People also removed shells and other sea artifacts from above the high tide, which is perfectly legal. However, the rules had to be sharpened such that no natural object should be removed from the beach. We also pioneered the initiative to visit the rocky reefs on bare foot only. This has shown to be much less damaging to shore life like limpets.

Seafriends has also sharpened safety issues while taking groups in the water. Unfortunately many schools still arrive with inadequate gear and safety procedures. It must be noted here that schools think that safety is promoted by having more parents in the water, but this is not true. Safety is entirely dependent on the right equipment (full wetsuits) and an intimate knowledge of local conditions. More parents in the water just causes new problems, as most are inadequate swimmers, and inexperienced in this pursuit and the local conditions.

Seafriends has learnt over time, that it is more important to convey a sense of amazement and enthusiasm for matters of the sea, rather than scholarly facts. We work with enthusiastic professionals who have a heart for their work. Education outside the classroom (EOTC) requires students to listen to others than school teachers.

Whereas people do cause physical damage to the rocky shore by treading, they cannot do much damage once they are swimming in the water. This is because the water carries their weight entirely. Because water is about 800 times denser than air, storm waves cause far more damage than people can ever do. Large numbers of people in the water can thus be supported sustainably.
 
 

f960810: on the rocky shore, students watch and listen as an instructor shows them the treasures and miracles of intertidal life. This group still has their shoes on.

f951921: by asking students to take their shoes off, the marine life on the rocks, has a longer lease on life. Particularly limpets are sensitive. However, some teachers object because it increases the risk of cuts and scratches.

f214320: full of expectation, children descend to the beach, while dressed in fully protective wetsuits and snorkelgear designed for the purpose.

f214323: before going into the water, students and parents are instructed how to use the gear and how to behave in the water.

But worse came after a junior official with the Department of Conservation prohibited the fish feeding altogether, without consulting the local community. Feeding was declared unnatural, unhealthy and an offence punishable under the MRA. First people ignored the ruling, while others removed the signs. When people were stopped entering the water with food, they resorted to breaking the sea urchins, which the fish loved even more than human food. People did so, even while knowing that heavy penalties were due for such offences.

It did not take long for the fish to realise that staying near the beach made no economic sense, and they disappeared in droves, and with them those fish that came for safety in numbers. Soon people noticed the disappearance of fish, and they stayed away too. Local businesses noticed the loss of income. For instance, Seafriends lost over $30,000 in each of the years following the feeding ban. It seriously hampered our efforts in saving the sea. For their first visit to a marine reserve, children were no longer seeing fish nearby and in large numbers. On many snorkel trips out, some saw no fish at all during a 50 minute swim !!

The people who manage this reserve, seldom or never are in the water, and they have but a rudimentary understanding of marine matters. They were unaware that since 1990, the ingress of mud into the reserve, had become the largest threat. Mud flows from the denuded and degrading land surrounding the reserve, and from the Pakiri River further west. It has suffocated and killed underwater life, and driven entire species out of the marine reserve, while also changing habitat structure. In June-Sept 1998 this problem became so pressing that nearly all crayfish walked out of the reserve. The friendly fishes thus experience a stress to move away from the beach, whereas the feeding attracted them in. Those species that cannot move easily, either died or stayed away. Now that the balance had shifted, the fish stayed away.

What was infuriating about DoC's decision, was that the problem was not in the feeding itself, but in the quantity fed during a limited period of the year. This problem could easily have been turned into a learning opportunity, by explaining it to the public, giving various alternative solutions, and letting them do what suits them best, while taking responsibility for their actions. Now that far fewer people are visiting the reserve, also an opportunity for education has evaporated.
The following rules could have been applied: Only close to the beach. Only a handful per person. Never on SCUBA. Never sea urchins. Don't buy food. Give some of your own lunch pack. Children only.

Another missed opportunity was that of losing support for marine reserves. Not DoC, nor University, nor Government in the end were as effective in broadcasting the conservation message, as were the blue and pink fish that people came to feed.
 

f015827: a girl stands in knee-deep water as the blue fishes gather towards the food in her outstretched hand. People came to believe and hope that children of many generations on, would be able to experience this.

f010206: A snorkeldiver feeds out small amounts of food to attract fish. As can be seen, the fish respond eagerly. In the picture blue maomao, snapper, blue cod and parore.

f022018: people have appeared on the fishes' horizon, hopefully with food. Here a school of blue maomao is seen jostling for a better position near the bag with food.

f015204: in trying to be very friendly towards the fishes, people brought more and more food, which eventually became a problem. See the blue maomao in the water and the (saturated) ducks in the top right?

f028216: a snorkeldiver plays with a sea urchin to attract the snapper from far around. Fish have learnt that urchins mean food and that divers are keen to please.

f030227: a diver follows an urchin trail, picking up parts of urchins that have been fed to these snapper, kelpfish and spotties. The fish are still interested, having little else to do all day.

f022025: young snapper mill around, waiting for food to arrive from above. Seeing such aggregations of fish was an exciting experience, now long lost.

f030237: large snapper command the upper strata, closer to the source of food. Note how the water has become murky from wastes and decomposing food.

But for the same reasons, it cannot serve as a baseline to compare 'outside' coasts with. However, scientists seldom make such distinction in their publications about the benefits of marine reserves.

The marine reserve is 5km long and 800m wide, but because it curves around Goat Island, its area is effectively 5.2km2, which is too small to be sustainable. A sustainable reserve is thought to be able to exist by itself without the need of the area around, while also not being drained by it. It needs to be sufficiently large to do so. However, even then it is still dependent on the amount and quality of the plankton imported from other areas. It is now thought that 'sustainable' marine reserves should be as large as 100km2 rather than 5km2. A reserve is sustainable only if it does not degrade. However, Goat Island has shown to be degrading fast.

It was insufficiently recognised at the time, that the seemingly monotonous sandy bottom was important for reef fishes and rocklobsters. On a regular basis, these animals migrate to their 'feeding grounds' of dog cockles, horse mussels, dosinia and scallops far outside the reserve's boundary. At the time this reserve was created, it was not realised that opposition came from those who fished the shore rather than those who fished the seabed. Extending the reserve another 5km out to sea, would have met little additional opposition but would have added considerable conservation value.

Another major mistake was the choice of the coastal boundaries, which now run across continuous rocky habitat. It was not predicted that the reserve's boundaries would invite an unusual amount of fishing. Thus the boundaries are depleted by fishing but replenished by reef fish moving out of the reserve into vacated territories. Had the boundaries been located outside a change in habitat, such as over the nearby sandy beach, such leakage would have been minimal and correspondingly the harmful effect of 'fishing the line'.

One of the most serious deficiencies of small reserves is that they leave no room for buffer zones which buffer the effects of fishing and mistakes made by not knowing precisely where boundaries run. It must also be recognised that seamen do not measure distance in kilometres or land miles but in nautical miles. Reserve boundaries should thus be defined in nautical miles.

Perhaps trivial, the name of a marine reserve must be simple and easy to remember. Cape Rodney to Okakari Point marine reserve is wrong because nobody uses it. Leigh marine reserve or better still, Goat Island marine reserve are much better names. Many of the (Maori) names for marine reserves in NZ are just too long and cumbersome.

Marine reserves are usually created in marine hot spots where the water is clear and fish congregate. But these qualities make them unsuitable for baseline studies, for example to compare more normal areas with, when studying the (beneficial) effects of marine reserves. Such hot spot marine reserves exaggerate the perceived benefits. However, scientists do not sufficiently acknowledge this.
 

f981031: dedicated fishermen have walked a long way to fish the boundary of the marine reserve. Although strictly legal, such fishing draws fish from the reserve. A wide buffer zone would have helped to reduce this kind of depletion.

marres04: On this map the ribbon shape of the Goat island marine reserve can clearly be seen. When one knows that currents pass along the outside of Goat Island where the bigger fish congregate, it is not difficult to see that places outside its boundary can be found where bait will attract fish from deep inside the reserve. A ribbon shaped marine reserve has too much boundary for its area, whereas a circle or square would be much better. The area around the outside of Goat Island is a marine hot spot in the clearest and deepest water, near currents and feeding grounds, while offering shelter against waves. Yet scientists do not acknowledge this.

We ask ourselves why nobody took action to remedy what was obviously a major threat to the marine life inside a protected area.

• New Zealand has a Resource Management Act which requires that any major earthworks be done in an environmentally friendly way. For instance, when establishing the Seafriends educational centre, we had to pass endless amounts of red tape and scrutiny before we were allowed to have it in this valley. The local council has classified all land in the catchment area adjacent to the marine reserve 'special coastal zone' which prohibits activities that could threaten the marine life. Yet here a major earthmoving activity was allowed to proceed unchecked. Why?
• The roading contractor who did the work, did not work according to common practice, which requires that the bare cuts be sealed with grass as soon as the cutting was done, but this was omitted. No provisions were made to catch runoff during the construction phase. Why?
• The local county council who is in the end responsible for the work, did nothing. Why?
• The Department of Conservation whose task it is to manage the marine reserve, and to protect the marine environment within, did nothing. Why?
• The scientists at the Marine Laboratory, looking out over the Goat Island Channel every day, and whose experiments in the sea are affected by this kind of threat, while driving over this road at least twice daily, did nothing. Why?
• Between June and September 1998, while the road sides were still bleeding profusely, nearly all crayfish walked out of the marine reserve after a prolonged period of mud storms. The scientists never made the connection. Why?
• The hundreds of thousands of visitors visiting the beach while noticing the murky water and the reduction in fish life, did nothing. Why?

f970827: a view of the idyllic Goat Island valley with Goat Island in the distance and the access road clearly visible on right.

f970814: View of the almost-three-lane road which required an extensive amount of cutting and filling. The road sides were never covered and stabilised, resulting in massive erosion and mud entering the marine reserve.

f970816: As the road sides remained barren while caving in, successive rainstorms washed hundreds of tonnes of mud into the marine reserve.

f960508: for many years the Goat Island Channel turned coffee-brown after each heavy rain fall. Yet nobody took action.

f014208: because a free fence has always been available at the sea's border, farmers never considered fencing off the coastal strip. As a result, over 100 years of grazing have dispatched the seedlings and understorey of the coastal fringe forest. Now the last of the proud trees are dying from old age, followed by rapid erosion.

f981122: the coast bordering the marine reserve is eroding badly. Once upon a time, a luscious coastal forest stood here but after it was burnt, grazers prevented any regrowth. Now the stately Pohutukawa trees are dying of old age but no seedlings are there to replace them. Precious soil is lost to the sea where it kills sea life.

f940717: When the water is clear, Goat Island is a magical place. The fishes think so too. People come from afar to swim with the friendly fishes. It is a place that could have come from heaven. But since the mid 1980s the situation changed quite suddenly, mainly because fertiliser was no longer subsidised. f960507: during storms the mud collected on the sea bottom is stirred up, clouding the waters. f212406: Heavy rain storms now colour the water brown as it runs off from degrading lands surrounding the reserve and the Pakiri River located west of it.

Where coasts are steep and farmers did not take the torch to the trees, the vegetation is under attack of a little monster introduced from Australia where it has in the meantime become endangered. The possum (as opposed to the American opossum), a marsupial, lives its entire life in the trees, descending only to make long journeys to other trees. In its pouch, a mother possum rears one joey which grows independent within one year. As a result, the fecundity of this species is high.

One would think that trees are productive enough to survive the possum's grazing, but this is not the case in New Zealand, where the vegetation has developed very frugally. Thus contrary to expectation, native trees do not survive the grazing of possums, which has resulted in entire coasts being denuded. Now one can see the yellow bands of eroding soil where once trees stood but even this will eventually become invisible. In the end it will seem that New Zealand has always had denuded coasts.
 

f970534: a mother possum lies dead on the road and here joey did not survive either. New Zealanders do not dodge possums on the road since every dead one helps to fight their plague.

f014321: death by possum happens gradually first, but then suddenly as these bleached trees testify. Within ten years no sign will be left of the massacre caused by possums grazing their foliage. Bad land care? This land at Cape Brett is managed by the Dept of Conservation!

f014324: a small moat between this island and the main land on right stops possums from crossing. On the right the trees are dead. No bird cries are heard. The little island, however, is alive with bird noises, and by night the screeching of sea birds and little blue penguins. Then DoC applied a possum poison (1080?). Now the island remains quiet by day and night. Fighting the possum plague is not easy.

f970714: People have peculiar ways of thinking. Here a precious stand of old Pohutukawa trees has been banded with aluminium sheet to prevent possums from climbing them. Although it saves the old trees, it does not save the seedlings and saplings which must one day replace them.

In the beginning of any marine reserve, poaching is frequent because of those who oppose the reserve but mainly because people have to get used to the new situation. Often a word is enough to stop it altogether. In Leigh even the most ardent poachers have given up under the pressure of derision by their mates. But there is a good story to be told.

The sunken car wrecks
A marine reserve is particularly unfair to those fishermen who depended on the area for fishing. One would think that the sea is an open access fishery but this is not so in practice. Commercial fishermen have unwritten agreements on who fishes where, and so it can happen that the burden of displacement falls on only a very few.

Once the marine reserve becomes a fact, the only place to fish is on its boundaries, which explains why fishing there is often done by those displaced. The seaward boundary of the reserve runs into a flat sandy bottom with good stocks of burrowed clams, fan shells and a scallop here and there. It is a fishing ground for fish, or a feeding ground. Snapper make daily migrations out of the reserve to visit such feeding grounds and even rocklobsters do so. They even stay on the sand, forming aggregations guarded by large males. In this manner the rocklobster fishery on the Chatham Islands rose to fame, where fishermen caught these crayfish with trawl nets!
But trawling is prohibited closer than 0.5 nautical miles in winter and 1.0nm in summer. By comparison, the boundary of the reserve lies within 800m or 0.468nm. An error of judgement is easily made of course, particularly since the outside boundary is not marked. So one trawler of a big fishing company did the dirty and trawled its net through the reserve by night, to bag 500kg of crayfish or a cashie as it is known, fetching $20/kg on the black market. This was a $10,000 windfall profit for the crew, worthy of imitation and so it happened.

However, in the process, these trawlers also scooped up the precious lobster traps (craypots) which annoyed the local cray fisherman no end. He complained, but received good laughter. Then he conceived a clever plan. He parked a number of car wrecks on the Leigh wharf, and by means of a strong tether, swooped them off the wharf deck into the sea, where he trawled them to within GPS precision inside the reserve's boundary. Several more car wrecks followed and the news was broadcast.

It had the expected effect and protected his cray pots. However, a Leigh trawler ended up stuck in a car wreck (oops) and began to complain to the Maritime Safety Authority which then began to lean heavily on the poor fisherman. The situation had now become a SAFETY issue and the car wrecks had to go! So it happened. But the word remained that one was not quite sure whether all car wrecks had been retrieved!

The fisherman has in the meantime moved elsewhere and has not bothered fishing the boundaries of the reserve since 1998 (when the crayfish disappeared?). Poaching does not happen to marine reserves only. These crayfishermen complain that about 10% of their catch is poached by others (divers and other fishermen).
 

The problems in enforcing rules are as follows:

• People must be informed about the presence of the marine reserve, what its purpose is and how to behave. This requires more signs than one would intuitively predict. Not surprisingly, most signs cannot be read by the new Asian immigrants.
• It is amazing to count the number of visitors totally new to the idea of marine reserves, and this one in particular. So the number of potential trespassers is higher than expected - every day.
• People must be given a chance to be responsible. This happens from two sides. Visitors familiar with the situation are always willing to point out that certain behaviour is unacceptable. But those visiting a remote part of the reserve miss out on signage and behaviour by example. Enforcement always has an element of education.
• Whoever in charge of enforcement must realise that there exist many imperfections, all intent on failing the protection a marine reserve offers. The location, choice of boundaries, landbased pollution, storm damage and more, all conspire to this end. This means that any offence is just another push in the wrong direction but cannot be of critical importance.
• One of the main imperfections is the absence of a sufficiently wide buffer zone. A reserve of only 800m wide has very little room for such a zone. Not being marked, it is easy to stray 200m inside, thinking that one is still outside the protected area. The landward boundaries likewise, should be treated as if a 200m buffer zone were present to prevent misunderstandings and petty enforcement. However, as will be seen below, enforcers do not take this precaution.

1. The area must have been created with overwhelming consensus, otherwise too much antipathy remains.
2. The area must have been marked on all charts and excessive signage including maps must be present near all points of access, boundaries and boat ramps. This requires several years of patience.
3. So people must know where the reserve is and how to behave there.
4. They must see the need for such behaviour (belief and co-operation).
5. And they must actually behave as required.

The top parking consists of a loop, just wide enough for buses to turn and angle-park off it. Two tighter loops lead to two terraces lower down. When fully occupied, visitors park along the access road up to 1km away from the beach. During such days it is estimated that over 4000 people are present on the beach and that some 10,000 visit that day by rotation.

There are a number of issues to consider. In the good old days a gravel country road led to a grassy knoll which was the parking lot. Visitors met sheep grazing the grass as free grass mowers. A cattle stop grid prevented the sheep from straying out of the parking lot. Visitors used all kinds of inventivity to make best use of the available space, which was neither bordered nor marked. After the weekend, the parking reverted back to a grassy knoll as if the paddock had never been disturbed. Today a black tar sealed infrastructure remains when the people have left. It offers less parking for more space. What went wrong?

On wet days cars could get stuck in the mud pools that developed as the reserve's success rose. The car park needed hardening. Locals would have done so with a hardened structure that would let the grass through; an urban bureaucracy chose for hard tar seal and rigid parkings with wooden barriers to prevent cars from straying out. Why?
Suddenly it became an offence to park in a creative way. Suddenly there were much fewer parkings. Was this necessary?

When the three-lane highway was completed, there was ample room to dedicate one lane to angle parking along up to 500m away. Instead, a small lane was marked, just enough for parallel parking. Fewer parks again.

Then the department did away with the sheep because trees were being planted and it was more convenient to do away with the sheep and the cattle grid rather than fencing the new trees. The cost of maintenance increased.
 
 

f992325: the parking seen from the air with the access road coming from the right and continuing along the cliff towards the Marine Laboratory in the distance.

f015524: On busy days, people park along the access road, far from the beach.

Not surprisingly, the Seafriends toilets about 1.5km up the road, bring welcome relief. One of three is dedicated to invalids and mothers and it is very much sought after with its running warm water.

Should a beach, however pristine have proper toilets with running water and hygienic washing facilities?
 

Update A new toilet block has been built as shown on the photo. The problem of running water was solved by a bore and the sewage is treated by a local sewage treatment plant, left of the photo. Council workers clean the toilets every morning. There are waste bins for recyclable and nonrecyclable rubbish, yet the change has left a notable impression. Whereas previously the sewage was slurped up by a sewage truck and discharged in a proper place somewhere else, the present system eventually spills the processed water into the local creek and the marine reserve. As a result, the creek's water has become black and the water in front of the beach always murky. The new system leaves a small influence on the environment for every visitor, whereas the previous primitive system did not. As the reserve becomes more popular, the environment recedes proportionally. As usual, humans destroy the places they love.

f015110: Nearly everyone visiting the marine reserve pass along this track to the beach. The information kiosk and signs are placed strategically.

f015109: An official sign informs people of the reserve and what activities are forbidden: fishing, taking of seafood and fishing from boats. "The Cape Rodney to Okakari Point Marine Reserve is a unique protected area for you to enjoy. The reserve acts as a nursery for commercial fish stocks and as a place to view some of the richest marine life in the region. EVERYTHING WITHIN THE RESERVE IS PROTECTED. NOTHING MAY BE CAUGHT, DAMAGED OR REMOVED."

Dive groups requested permission to restore these markers and to place more permanent moorings on their preferred training grounds over sandy areas at about 10m depth. Such moorings help reduce anchoring damage and they provide a focus for safety in case of emergency. But permission was denied. Why?

The marine reserve has sensitive benthic communities of sponges, also called sponge gardens. Although an anchor would not necessarily cause grievous damage, the anchor chain does when the wind or currents change and the boat swings around, the chain scraping the bottom. In such areas for the sake of protecting the sensitive habitat, strong moorings must be provided to signal that anchoring is prohibited and to provide an alternative. No such mooring buoys have been provided. Why?

The outer boundary of the marine reserve is almost impossible to locate, even with the proper equipment such as radar and GPS. Boundary markers should have been provided from the very beginning and maintained thereafter. This has not been done. Why?

Passengers can embark boats only off the small beach, and only where no boulders are found. It is a very restricted area where also many swimmers begin their discoveries. A collision between propellers and swimmers is thinkable but even so, is not of real concern because everyone is attentive and boats make only slow progress while people have also become used to the situation. However, the only glassbottom boat operator now claims a large proportion of this scarce resource, forcing others to wait or take risks.
 

Science has made civilisation great, and where supported by science, political decisions are better. While our use of the sea is intensifying at the same time that the degrading influence of the land is accelerating, research is needed to provide reliable knowledge for making long-lasting environmental decisions. Unfortunately, several things have gone wrong, as clearly set out in Myths(7) and Science Exposed, and also reflected in the long list of wrongs in the present politics regarding marine conservation. This is not the place for dwelling on the shortcomings on research done. Instead we'd like to stress the need for marine research wherever reserves are created. This research has the following nature:

• In order to judge the effectiveness of the reserve, some form of monitoring must begin and be maintained in the long run, in order to gain insight in the process of recovery and whether the reserve is meeting its objectives and whether it is sustainable.
• To show immediate benefits, it has become customary to monitor the commercially fished species, which of course show the most dramatic rebound against displaced fisheries outside. However, here in Leigh such attention has detracted from monitoring other species. As a result the disappearance of beds of bearded mussels (Modiolus aerolatus), horse mussels (Atrina zelandica), bryozoa, sponges and many more have been left unnoticed.
• Because coastal seas are deteriorating, some form of water quality testing must take place. In Leigh, scientists have not noticed the degradation caused by deteriorating water quality from landbased erosion. They have even attributed habitat changes inside the reserve to reserve-related benefits rather than degradation (the kelpbed death, sea urchin mortalities, crayfish walk-out and so on). No data on degradation is available.
• Visitor surveys are necessary to respond to their expectations and for the necessary feedback.
• Surveys on social and business impacts due to management decisions and benefits or liabilities arising from marine reserves are also needed.
• Habitat mapping is desirable where a reserve is highly successful.

f006102: a rocklobster tagged with an acoustic tag tied to its back. Such tags are costly and difficult to attach. Fortunately this rocklobster is protected allowing research to proceed unhindered. But it loses the tag when moulting.

f016803: Due to dense plankton blooms, absorbing the sun light, the kelpbed died over its entire range in the spring of 1992. By January 1993 this was what it looked like. It caused major ecological reverberations afterwards.

0712142: scientific pollution on the intertidal rocky shore: sharp netted exclusion barriers and sharp stainless steel bolts, a threat for children studying the rocky shore.

f009615: scientific exclusion experiments on the intertidal rocky shore, not removed after use. When removed by fierce waves, their sharp bolts remain a threat.

The international literature on marine reserves unanimously agrees on forms of local management with participation of stakeholders and local administrators. Most people (landlubbers) insufficiently understand the special nature of the sea and how it should be managed accordingly. Thus one of the largest impediments to success is central management by an ideologically motivated government department (DoC), as is the case for Goat Island. These people are so far removed from the sea and a reserve's daily needs, that management causes more conflict than it resolves. It is also less cost-effective while the benefits from maintenance and support do not flow into the local economy.
 

1) The sea is a domain with free access and concessions would interfere with this freedom.

2) The concession system is purported to enable DoC to control commercial activity in marine reserves, but we have coped well for 27 years so far, without any. It claims that non-commercial activity is free from concessions, but in many cases, it is exactly this which must be controlled for the sake of the environment. In other words, the concession system is not aimed at controlling activities detrimental to the environment, but aimed only at making money.

3) Since concessions are based on extracting money, (a large percentage of profit), DoC is effectively having a finger in the honeypot. This means that it can no longer be seen to be an independent and impartial manager. As is known from many examples, DoC will be tempted to judge in favour of the honey, rather than the environment. This is already becoming evident in whale and dolphin watching.

4) Concessions can and will be allocated to the highest bidder. This means that it favours large operators, to the detriment of smaller, often local operators. They, in turn, use it to keep competitors out. The local community suffers, as DoC creams off their potential profits. The commercial 'extraction' mushrooms as companies market their products aggressively in trying to maximise their profits. The environment suffers.

5) It is wrong to bring in a system that makes people who go about their normal business, culpable or accountable to concessions. Dive operators have been using marine reserves for training for as long as these exist, indeed they have used the area long before. In fact, the Goat Island marine reserve was somehow taken off them. They do not go there for seeing fishes, but they use the shelter and clear waters around Goat Island for training and tests. At the same time, they introduce novice divers to the marine conservation concept. To drive them away, or to subject them to concessions for the simple reason that they are 'commercial' is anathema to the freedom every New Zealander is born with.
 
 

The early version of the glass bottom boat for which permission was given to operate inside the marine reserve, was a small tub that could seat some 20-30 people around a central window. It was small enough to take advantage of small beaches while hardly interfering with swimmers and snorkellers. Then suddenly a much larger model appeared, this time large enough to do a bus load of passengers at once. Passengers are now seated around two windows. Soon complaints from other beach users began to surface:

• the boat claims a space on the beach in the water and on the dry beach for a small 'office' consisting of no more than a chair and table. But there are queues of people waiting for the next trip and people must stay clear from the boat.
• the boat's propellers stir up a lot of silt from the bottom, silt that wafts into the areas favoured for snorkelling, thereby reducing visibility and enjoyment.
• whereas the small boat didn't need sound amplification, now the sound of the narrative can be heard from afar.
• snorkellers and swimmers feel threatened in the water when the boat comes nearby, as its two propellers are not shrouded for protection.
• the boat often drives over SCUBA divers to give the passengers a view of the divers below. This is not always appreciated as one can imagine.
• the business advertises heavily to attract more people to the beach. As a result, often most of the people on the beach are for the glassbottom boat, as are also most of the parking slots. This interferes with those who come for beach fun, diving and swimming. Clearly a conflict of interests is developing.
• the business pays no rates, does not have its own toilets and parking spaces, but is entirely supported by public amenities. It enjoys an unfair advantage over nearby businesses.

f015822: the first glassbottom boat was small enough to take advantage of small beaches but it had to do a bus load in two trips.

0901023: the latest glassbottom boat can take a busload of passengers at once. It can't help interfering with traditional activities.