31 January 2011

To say that I am royally pissed off is an understatement. We have endured more than a year of very marginal conditions and now the Queensland floods. All that mud moving down our way just goes to shut down any chance of a dive. Then we see the results of the revue of the Solitary Islands Marine Park. The idea was to straighten boundaries and encourage improved compliance with sanctuary borders. We got involved in a big way with more than 50% of submissions coming from spearos and fishers. Result, the Greens screwed us over royally. It no longer matters if you participate because along the line you will be ignored, is there no recourse? The powers that be in management of Marine Parks have an agenda, agreed on behind the scenes with politicians. That means when the final decision comes through your opinion will be ignored. I am not surprised that the local commercials are taking this fight seriously. I hope that in the next State elections, sanity holds and this pathetic Labour government is chucked out. Hopefully the coalition will scrap these new one-sided decisions. Interesting to see that scuba divers are still allowed to operate in the sanctuary areas.