Ron Hunter from Dive Forster said the provision of sanctuary zones were vital to the long-term biodiversity and health of our marine environment. 

“The oceans are essential to the survival of the planet – and to us as a species,” he said. 

“The ocean is 70 per cent of the planet. If we can’t look after the ocean… it doesn’t look good for our survival.”

Recreational fishers are allowed to carry out rock fishing in sanctuary zones, while the government introduces two new advisory bodies to regulate marine parks, the Marine Estate Management Authority and the Marine Estate Expert Knowledge Panel. 

Dive shop owners from across NSW have written to Premier Barry O’Farrell to raise their concerns that any decision to allow fishing in sanctuary zones would put their business under threat. 

Owners said the move would threaten the economic viability of their businesses, and discourage Australian and overseas divers seeking a unique underwater experience in NSW. 

“Diving and other nature-based tourists stay longer and spend more money than any other type of tourist, making them an important contributor to NSW’s tourism industry,” the letter stated. 

“Any plans to open up sanctuary zones risks diverting tourists and tourism dollars to other states.”

While he said opening sanctuary zones to fishing would affect his business, Mr Hunter said that was only a tiny part of his concern. His main issue would be in seeing the fish populations shrink again, after a decade of improvements in numbers. 

He said the way that sanctuary zones had been proven to work internationally was that there was a gradual build up of numbers over time and an explosion in the quality of the fish in the sanctuary zone. If given time, these numbers of good fish would then spill out to the general fishing areas, for recreational fishers to enjoy. 

Mr Hunter labelled any move to allow fishing in sanctuary zones as a “retrograde step” on the part of the government. 

He said, instead of rolling back sanctuary protections, the government should be making moves to stop the practice of commercial shark finning, which strips the fins from sharks for use in various products and soups, mainly in Asia. Studies have suggested the practice, which often includes the throwing of the still alive shark back into the water, accounts for the deaths of tens of millions of sharks internationally each year. 

“We can work to dry up their supply,” he said. 

“It is a world-wide problem.”