CRC REEF RESEARCH CENTRE TECHNICAL REPORT No. 13

A Review Of Environmental Impact Monitoring Of Pontoon Installations In The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.

V.M. Nelson, Tropical Environment Studies & Geography, James Cook University
B.D. Mapstone, CRC Reef Research Centre Ltd, c/- James Cook University

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Tourism is an economically and socially valuable activity in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. Pontoons moored offshore provide a stable and convenient platform from which tourists can experience remote areas of the Great Barrier Reef (GBR) with ease and comfort. Visitors are ferried to and from pontoons by large, high-speed vessels daily, but cannot stay overnight on pontoons. There have been 19 pontoons used on the GBR, though fewer than this are currently in operation.

The objectives of this report were to review pontoon monitoring programmes, synthesise and re-analyse data from them and to make recommendations about the design and implementation of future monitoring programmes at pontoons. The report is based solely on documented evidence and does not consider influences such as 'corporate culture', experience, political pressures, and personal judgement of those administering pontoon monitoring.

The first systematic monitoring of the ecological impacts of pontoon installation and associated activities was at Agincourt Reefs in 1986-87. That monitoring programme was initiated by tour guides working with the pontoon operator. Since 1989, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA, the Authority) has required all pontoon operators to fund an independent monitoring programme to assess the environmental impacts of pontoon operations. Although the developer funds monitoring, independent consultants under contract to the GBRMPA do the monitoring. This mechanism maintains important financial and operational distance between developer and monitoring consultants and it is expected that this separation of consultants and proponents will favour impartial assessments of impacts. This should continue to be the basis of monitoring project management.

Pontoon monitoring programmes to date have been cast generally in the sound framework of Before-After, Control-Impact (BACI) designs. The GBRMPA was among the earliest agencies to attempt to implement BACI monitoring programmes systematically. There has been considerable variation in the success of implementing these designs, however. The result is that the 11 monitoring programmes we reviewed differed in fundamental ways. This heterogeneity has resulted in a lack of rigour in the synthesis of results and the learning value of the collective monitoring programmes. Individually, many pontoon monitoring programmes were found to be deficient in design, implementation and analysis. The main deficiencies we found included: poorly specified objectives, insufficient baseline monitoring, too few control sites, insufficient post-installation monitoring, frequent and confounding changes in methodology, errors in statistical analyses, and lengthy delays in reporting. In all cases, the likelihood that monitoring would have detected real impacts was low unless those impacts were extreme. Responsibility for these shortcomings must be shared between the Authority, Proponents, and Consultants. Responsibility for correcting procedures to avoid such mistakes in future should fall to the Authority.

Despite these many problems, it was clear that early pontoons had some major impacts on reef biota, particularly when moored over reef substrata with early mooring systems. Changes to mooring technology and mooring pontoons over sediment substrata have reduced or eliminated these impacts. There is weak evidence from monitoring to date that activities such as snorkelling and resort diving near pontoons have small impacts on corals, but the long-term consequences of those impacts are unknown. All pontoons result in the aggregation of several species of fish, but there is no conclusive evidence that these aggregations cause impacts on other biota (or that they don't).

We recommend that pontoon monitoring should continue, but should be streamlined and more specifically targeted at known activities and their most likely impacts. Monitoring must be better designed, and good designs better implemented, and should be standardised across pontoon installations if it is to fulfil expectations, provide best value for money, and maximise benefit to the future management of pontoons and associated activities. Once properly designed, monitoring should be standardised for a defined period (3-5 years) and then reviewed and refined in the light of then current knowledge and technology.

THIS PUBLICATION IS CITED AS:
Nelson, V.M. & Mapstone, B.D. (1997)
A review of environmental impact monitoring of pontoon installations in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park
Technical Report No. 13
Townsville; CRC Reef Research Centre Ltd, 85 pp.

ISBN 1 876054 13 1.

A full copy of this report may be obtained from the author(s), and through the following libraries: