What do you think rehctub;

Unintended consequence of fools not being bright enough to see the obvious result of what they do?

Or dictatorial ratbags, not giving a damn as long as they can force others to their bidding?

I fly twice a week over the northeastern extremities of the reef & I see about one boat every two years at most in that area. I was diving out there about 4-5 years ago & didn't see a single cots but ten years earlier there were many. I'll be out again next week & I'll dive as much as I can & check if there is any damage & report back.
What I did notice years ago was that some reefs were simply blanketed with COTS yet other reefs only metres away were totally pristine. I recall diving at Michelmas Cay, Pixie Reef, Arlington reef, Frankland reefs etc & they were good yet 5 years ago I went back to Michelmas & Frankland & Michelmas was absolute wasteland but Frankland was very good.
I can't disagree with you Hasbeen but neither can I dismiss the impact of tourism.

Has been I know the pontoon you refer to, as I spent time there myself, in fact, I used to help prepare to food stuffs for the reef trips as theynwere known back then.

I was on South Molle, 85 to 87.

As for the green zones, the experts simply do not have the science to back up what they have implemented, however, they went ahead anyway.

How they went about it was deceitful as well, as they consulted locals for a few years, claiming that they wanted to know where the fish were caught, so they could close other portions of the reef.

Surprise, surprise, they lied and closed off most of the fishing spots the locals mentioned.

Evidence of this is in that one such closed spot is a nothing area, just put there to test them out, they took the bait.

Apparently it has been proven that coral trout are territorial and live most of their lives within about 100 m of thier birth place.

Now the only breeders are the larger males and, the smaller ones have to wait for a large dominate one to die before they can breed.

It is therefore suggested that culling larger fish is healthy.

I forgot to say that the pontoon would get moved now and again due to the reef dying around it.

In this times they blamed the diesel fuels and oils.

Rehctub that was probably the sub, [coral viewing thing], crashing into the reef & trying to demolish it.

It was a dreadful thing to drive. Not much faster than the tidal current, steered like a plow, & went sideways with the current quicker than you could turn it.

It was hard enough to find skippers willing to spend most of their time out there, without having to get those with superior boat handling skills to do it.

I had a couple with girlfriends who lived out there with them, but otherwise the young ones were a problem. You'd no sooner get them trained than they would have a couple of days off back in civilization. Some little girl would give them the eye, & they didn't want to go back out there.

They had to live out there to keep everything clean. In just a couple of days with no one there, the whole lot would disappear under a mountain of bird droppings that you could smell from a couple of miles away.

I tried one of those expensive electronic bird scarer on the pontoon. It became their favourite perch.

I would love to talk more about those days, as we certainly shared the same memories.

Feel free to contact GY to get my details.

I remember setting a mate up with a week on the pontoon, nobody ever found out.

He would stay there and be scarse when the boat arrived.

I was the butcher on the island, now there's a laugh, big Artie and co, I was quite good at fixing deals here and there.

Ah the good old days.

But the reality is, this is simply another over regulated part of our country.