The Australian Fishing Trade Association (AFTA), supported by the Boating Industry Association Ltd (BIA), has made a formal submission to the Western Australian Government’s review of the State Environmental (Cockburn Sound) Policy 2015.
Cockburn Sound is one of Western Australia’s most important marine environments. It supports recreational fishing and boating, commercially and recreationally important fish species, seagrass meadows, benthic communities, crustaceans, shellfish, plankton, juvenile fish habitat and a complex marine food web.
With the proposed Westport development requiring a major, multi-year dredging program, AFTA and BIA believe the review of the State Environmental Policy represents an important opportunity to ensure the environmental framework governing Cockburn Sound is strong enough to protect the entire marine ecosystem for generations to come.
The issue is bigger than the dredging footprint
AFTA’s principal concern is not limited to the seabed physically removed during dredging.
Dredging can generate suspended sediment that is transported by tides and currents beyond the excavation area. This can increase turbidity, reduce underwater light, affect water quality and ultimately settle over marine habitats some distance from where dredging occurs.
The potential consequences therefore extend beyond direct habitat removal and beyond any one species or habitat.
AFTA and BIA are calling for the environmental assessment and management of Westport dredging to consider the full geographical and ecological footprint of sediment plumes and sediment deposition, including cumulative and downstream impacts on the interconnected Cockburn Sound ecosystem.
Protecting the whole ecosystem
Seagrass and Cockburn Sound’s internationally significant pink snapper spawning aggregations are extremely important, but they are components of a much larger ecological system.
The submission calls for protection and monitoring of the broader marine environment, including benthic habitats and organisms, plankton and zooplankton, fish eggs and larvae, juvenile and adult fish, crustaceans, shellfish, cephalopods and other marine life, together with the food-web relationships and habitats upon which higher predators depend.
AFTA believes environmental management must recognise these connections. Damage to organisms at the bottom of the food web, nursery habitat or recruitment processes can ultimately affect fish populations and the productivity of the wider West Coast marine environment.
A pragmatic pathway forward
AFTA and BIA recognise the strategic importance of the Westport project and that, subject to environmental approvals, substantial dredging will be required.
Our submission is therefore not simply about opposing development.
It proposes a practical environmental pathway:
AVOID → MITIGATE → RESTORE → REPLICATE → EXPAND → MONITOR → ADAPT
Where environmental impacts can be avoided, they should be. Where they cannot, they must be rigorously mitigated. Where habitat or ecological function is affected, restoration and renewal should occur at a scale capable of producing a genuine long-term environmental benefit.
Importantly, environmental monitoring must be capable of triggering changes to dredging operations—including reducing, relocating or temporarily stopping dredging—where agreed ecological thresholds are exceeded.
Turning Westport into an opportunity for environmental renewal
AFTA and BIA believe the scale of investment associated with Westport provides an opportunity to do more than simply minimise environmental damage.
The submission proposes a long-term Cockburn Sound Ecosystem Mitigation, Monitoring and Renewal Plan, supported by independent science, transparent public reporting and ongoing investment in habitat restoration and ecological resilience.
This includes seagrass restoration, ecological and recreational reefs, habitat-enhancing marine infrastructure, beneficial reuse of suitable dredged material, restoration of connected marine habitats and continued research into the ecological processes that make Cockburn Sound productive.
The objective should not be simply to compensate for individual hectares of habitat affected.
It should be to ensure that Cockburn Sound remains a functioning, connected and resilient marine ecosystem.
AFTA and BIA’s position
The submission asks the Western Australian Government to ensure the revised State Environmental Policy is capable of addressing the cumulative environmental pressures Cockburn Sound will face over coming decades.
Our measure of success is straightforward:
A working port and a healthier Cockburn Sound are not mutually exclusive. The long-term objective should be for Cockburn Sound to emerge from the Westport development cycle more resilient, more productive and better protected than it is today.
AFTA will continue advocating for science-based environmental management that protects healthy marine ecosystems, sustainable recreational fishing, boating access and the businesses and communities that depend upon them.
Read the full AFTA/BIA submission:
Review of the State Environmental (Cockburn Sound) Policy 2015 — Dredging, Sediment Plumes, Ecosystem Integrity and a Pathway to Renewal.