Tasmania has built its brand off the back of strong biosecurity and an environmental ethos. Still, the latest threat has the potential to derail some of the pillars of our economy.
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Our marine industries are next in the biosecurity firing line, facing threats laid bare in an Australian scientific paper.
The paper investigated Tasmania's marine environments and found, among other things, East Coast waters are warming at a rate four times faster than global averages.
The paper also found introduced species were increasingly preying on native invertebrates. Most alarmingly though, the report found there had not been consistent, comprehensive governmental reporting on marine ecosystems since 2009.
That comment is alarming, because Tasmania is economically vulnerable to changes in marine environments, and also because it is home to nationally significant marine research organisations, such as the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, the Blue Economy CRC and the Australian Maritime College.
All of those institutions receive some government funding to assist with their research. While the paper says IMAS and the Blue Economy CRC offer opportunities for future reporting, the fact they have not been to date flies in the face of the state's ethos. Tasmania's brand was built of being clean and green, and the current Liberal government also prides itself on pushing for renewable energy options - further cementing the state as an environmentally conscious state.
However, without comprehensive government reporting, the full extent of changes in the marine environments will not be fully understood. And it puts at risk a majority of future economic endeavours put forward by the state and federal governments. Projects such as Battery of the Nation, investment in tidal energy projects, and even naval shipbuilding (what impact does warming marine environments have on hardware?), let alone the existing aquaculture industry. As an island, Tasmania has a lot that it can gain from its marine environments, but failure to monitor and report consistently on the changes is negligible.
