This looks good, great to see something happening, and hopefully the more comprehensive option is chosen..the fact that there are two options on the table is somewhat disgraceful, but kind of what you may expect from a forum that includes people who facilitate putting orange roughy fillets in supermarket freezers and killing rare sea
lions. We still seem focused on defining and protecting future relic populations then exploting the bejusus out of everything else....and we still don't know stuff all about the ecology of these environments.
One thing I am slightly uneasy about is the exclusion of the Snares from the process. Anyone know the history of this? Comes down to definition of biogeographic regions I guess, and perhaps political expediency/practicality?
Are there plans to address the lack of marine reserves in the Snares Area?
Both the forum report and the F&B website, among others cite statistics which refer to the whole World Heritage subantarctic island site (including the Snares), as justification for marine protection around the other subantarctic islands. It is like the Snares is being written out of our subantarctic geography.
Ironically the Snares is also arguably the most at risk environment, last I heard Undaria had been found adjacent to its permanent mooring lines (the only lines in the NZ subantarctic), so there is more localised fishing, the seabird population is perhaps the most dense of any of the islands - the Bounties might rival it - and it is the only island group with an endemic penguin species confined to the group.