NSW Aboriginal community launches sea urchin fishery to restore reefs

Walbunja diver John Carriage has been hunting and gathering in the ocean since he was a young child, clinging onto his father's back as he first learned to duck dive.

Just months ago, he was facing a possible 10-year jail term for practising a cultural fishing tradition handed down by his elders in a case was abandoned by state prosecutors 11 days into the trial.

"I've been to court around four times," he said. "It's not a good look for our culture and it scares a lot of the next generation to do what we do."

After decades of defending their traditional fishing rights in the courts, Aboriginal custodians on the NSW south coast are now fighting to safeguard their saltwater culture from an even greater, existential threat.

The long-spined sea urchin, endemic to NSW, has exploded in numbers, transforming 50 per cent of the shallow reefs that have sustained south coast people for millennia into barren, white-rock wastelands.

But there is a solution to this ecological crisis.

The NSW government is now backing a plan for an Aboriginal-led sea urchin fishery on the south coast, with a $1.48 million grant to advance sustainable sea urchin management and Indigenous-branded product development.

As part of the plan, John Carriage and his cousin Denzel will train as professional urchin divers under the guidance of diver and exporter Jamie Newman.

Jamie has entered into a partnership with Indigenous non-profit Joonga Land and Water Aboriginal Corporation. He is passionate about building a "forever industry" that regenerates the reef ecosystem.

"Every time we're taking a sea urchin out, we're allowing the weed to regrow," he said.

A 'Goldilocks zone' for sea urchins

While decades of overfishing of urchin predators like grouper, snapper and crayfish have allowed sea urchins to proliferate in NSW, rising sea temperatures are extending their range into Victoria and Tasmania, devastating kelp forests across a 2,000-kilometre stretch of Australia's Great Southern Reef.

Marine Biologist Cayne Layton said the warming ocean had created a "Goldilocks zone" on the NSW south coast, where conditions for the sea urchins were optimal.

"Southern NSW in particular has some of the largest barrens and some of the largest increases in the areas of those barrens," Dr Layton said.

But he pointed to evidence of the extraordinary potential for recovery once urchin densities were reduced.

At a trial site at Merimbula, where 30,000 urchins were removed by a local recreational fishing group, a diverse selection of kelp and seaweed has started to grow back in just 10 months.

With that potential comes the chance to develop a restorative fishery and to right the wrongs of the past.

"The urchin industry is relatively new in Australia, and there's a real opportunity for traditional custodians to be at the centre of this industry, rather than at the margins of it as we've seen with other fisheries in the past," Dr Layton said.

'They called it poaching, we called it survival'

Walbunja elder Newton Carriage holds a black and white photo taken by photographer Ricky Maynard in 1989, documenting the enduring tradition of Aboriginal cultural fishing on the south coast.

In the photo, Newton and his cousin Keith Nye are showing Newton's son Shane how to prepare abalone after a dive.

Both Keith and Shane later served jail terms for harvesting their traditional sea resources.

"They called it poaching, we called it survival," Newton said. "We were surviving in our own country."

Newton's grandson Denzel is now the third generation to face the court system over cultural fishing, and elders hope his generation will be the last.

In recent years, a string of prosecutions of Aboriginal cultural fishers have been withdrawn or dismissed while a Native Title claim is being determined on the south coast, and custodians are focusing on the urgent need to heal sea country.

Tillmann Boehme from the University of Wollongong has been working with the south coast Aboriginal community for four years to develop a sea country plan and a business model for a sustainable Aboriginal-led sustainable seafood enterprise.

"We have an Aboriginal community that has been dispossessed of their sea country, dispossessed of their resources," Dr Boehme said.

Healing sea country

Walbunja elder Wally Stewart takes the helm of Jamie Newman's boat as John and Denzel enter the water.

"You can see them in the water, they're just natural divers, taught by cultural fishermen," he said.

"And they've never been given that opportunity to be part of an industry like this."

As part of their training, Jamie will teach them to dive with supplied air, to operate their own boat and to select and process export-quality urchins.

Wally Stewart sees an opportunity for the young divers to be seen as role models in their community, and to start healing sea country before it is too late.

"We need the next generation to take that lead for us now," he said.