The Commercial Dugong and Marine Turtle Fisheries, 1847–1969

Australian Economic History Review, Vol. 48, No. 3 November 2008 ISSN 0004-8992 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8446.2008.00240.x EXPLOITING MARINE WILDLIFE IN QUEENSLAND: THE COMMERCIAL DUGONG AND MARINE TURTLE FISHERIES, 1847–1969 By Ben Daley,Peter Griggs and Helene Marsh James Cook University The historical exploitation of marine resources in Queensland has only been partially documented. In particular, the history of the commercial fishing of dugongs and marine turtles has received comparatively little scholarly attention. Since European settlement in Queensland, various human activities have exploited these resources. We present documentary and oral history evidence of the scale of those industries. Based on extensive archival and oral history research, we argue that diverse fishing practices occurred and that the sustained exploitation of dugongs, green turtles, and hawksbill turtles led to observable declines in the numbers of these animals – now species of conservation concern. JEL categories: N57, O13, Q22, Q29, Q57 Keywords: commercial fisheries, dugongs, Great Barrier Reef, marine turtles, Australia INTRODUCTION Europeans began settling what was to become the British colony of Queensland in northeast Australia from the 1820s onwards. Here they encountered a land that contained abundant resources that could be exploited: forests rich in red cedar; minerals, particularly gold, coal, tin and copper; and fertile soils that supported crops of sugar cane, maize, and wheat. Well-grassed land enabled a thriving pastoral industry to be established rapidly and dairying was flourishing in the better-watered parts of southern Queensland by 1900.1 The coastal waters were also resource-rich, containing pearl-shell, bêche-de-mer, marine turtles, dugongs, 1 For the best general account of the exploitation of Queensland’s resources until 1915, see Fitzgerald, From the Dreaming to 1915. © 2008 The Authors 227 Journal compilation © Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd and the Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand 2008 228 Ben Daley, Peter Griggs and Helene Marsh whales, and many species of estuary and reef fish. The historical exploitation of marine resources in Queensland, however, has been only partially documented. Regina Ganter published a detailed study of the pearl-shelling industry between 1860 and 1960, while Noel Loos provided the most comprehensive account of the bêche-de-mer fishery in North Queensland between 1861 and 1897 and its reliance on Aboriginal workers.2 The impact of the short-lived commercial humpback whale fishery that operated from 1952 until 1962, based at the Tangalooma whaling station on Moreton Island, has also been documented. That fishery resulted in the sharp decline of the east Australian humpback whale population, with numbers falling from an estimated 10,000 animals to around 500 in a single decade.3 The operation and the impact of the Queensland commercial dugong and marine turtle fisheries have been documented less thoroughly, and the exploitation of these animals is little mentioned in the seminal works of Australian environmental history.4 Concerns about the historical exploitation of marine wildlife species have been expressed in recent scientific debates about the status of marine ecosystems worldwide. Many authors claim that marine ecosystems are deteriorating rapidly because of the over-harvesting of marine species, marine pollution, and climate change.5 The coastal waters of Queensland include the areas now defined as the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area (GBRWHA), Torres Strait, Hervey Bay and Moreton Bay, all of which are important marine ecosystems containing animals listed as species of conservation concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).6 These areas contain critical marine habitats, including feeding grounds, breeding areas, and refuges. Particular concerns have been expressed about the condition of the GBRWHA, which, whilst regarded as one of the most pristine coral reef ecosystems in the world, nonetheless displays evidence of system-wide decline, including a large reduction in marine mammal numbers since European settlement.7 However, previous assessments of the magnitude of European impact on marine wildlife species have been generally based on a relatively uncritical use of secondary sources. Those studies have been 2 Ganter, Pearl-Shellers of Torres Strait; Loos, Invasion and Resistance, pp. 118–39. 3 Corkeron, The status of cetaceans in the GBRMP, pp. 283–6; GBRMPA, Whale and Dolphin Conservation; Jones, The Whalers of Tangalooma 1952–1962; Orams and Forestell, From whale harvesting to whale watching, pp. 667–73; Paterson et al., The status of humpback whales, pp. 135–42. 4 However, see Bowen and Bowen, Great Barrier Reef ; Johnson, Modified form of whaling; Limpus et al., The green turtle, Chelonia mydas, population of Raine Island, pp. 349–440. 5 Bellwood et al., Confronting the coral reef crisis, pp. 827–33; Hughes et al., Climate change, pp. 929–33; Hughes et al., New paradigms, pp. 380–6; Jackson et al., Historical overfishing, pp. 629–38; Pandolfi et al., Global trajectories, p. 957. 6 The IUCN is the oldest and largest global environmental network, which publishes authoritative assessments of the conservation status of species worldwide; see IUCN (2007) IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. The GBRWHA has been acknowledged as an environment of global significance because of its superlative natural phenomena; see Bowen and Bowen, Great Barrier Reef ; Lawrence et al., Great Barrier Reef ; Veron, A Reef in Time. 7 Bellwood et al. Confronting the coral reef crisis; Hopley et al., Geomorphology of the Great Barrier Reef, p. 3; Jackson et al., Historical overfishing; Pandolfi et al., Global trajectories. © 2008 The Authors Journal compilation © Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd and the Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand 2008 Exploiting marine wildlife in Queensland 229 challenged recently on the basis of modern scientific methods and improved understanding of the ecology of marine mammals.8 Given the current conservation threats to dugong and marine turtles, there is a need to use historical sources more critically to reconstruct the operation and likely impact of the commercial fisheries in Queensland that exploited those resources. The purpose of this article is to reconstruct the historical commercial dugong and marine turtle fisheries and to indicate the likely scale of their ecological impact. Specifically, our intention is to inform estimates of the influence of European practices on dugong and marine turtle populations based on extensive documentary and oral history research. Thus, the article begins with a discussion of commercial dugong fishing in Queensland for the period 1847–1969, followed by a history of the commercial marine turtle fishery for the period 1867–1962. Those accounts describe exploitative – and largely unsustainable – industries that played distinct, but limited, roles in the history of European settlement in Australia. In this article, we aim to assess the environmental significance of those industries and to derive implications for contemporary environmental management – both by providing estimates of the human impact on particular species that require distinct management and conservation practices, and by indicating the magnitude of the ecological effect that can occur in the absence of effective regulation and adequate marine protected areas. Above all, we argue that while the commercial fishery practices we describe ceased almost 40 years ago, the human impact on dugongs and marine turtles in Queensland waters continues to require long-term, effective management, based on scientific research and moni- toring linked with agreed environmental performance indicators. Evidence of the operation of the fisheries was obtained primarily in the Queen- sland State Archives (QSA) in Brisbane: in the official records of the former Queensland Department of Aboriginal and Island Affairs and the Queensland Department of Harbours and Marine (QDHM). Other evidence was found in the Annual Reports of the QDHM and in the various reports of the Queensland Inspectors of Fisheries, published in the Queensland Parliamentary Papers (QPP) and in the Queensland Votes and Proceedings (QVP). Export statistics were obtained from the Statistics of the Colony of Queensland (SCQ ) and the Statistics of the State of Queensland (SSQ ). Other documentary evidence was gained from historical books and pho- tographs, especially the collections held at the John Oxley Library in Brisbane. Those documentary sources were supplemented with oral histories provided by expert informants who observed changes in dugong and marine turtle populations, or who participated in the commercial fisheries. Informants were recruited using a snowballing technique; a total of 47 original semi-structured interviews were recorded between October 2002 and December 2003. The complete oral history collection has been deposited at the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority (GBRMPA) Library in Townsville. The evidence was cross-referenced 8 The complex issues involved in reconstructing historical populations of marine animals are discussed in Marsh et al., Historical marine population estimates, pp. 481–92. © 2008 The Authors Journal compilation © Blackwell Publishing Asia Pty Ltd and the Economic History Society of Australia and New Zealand 2008 230 Ben Daley, Peter Griggs and Helene Marsh wherever possible in order to verify sources and to comply with widely accepted

Load more