By Chris Howe of WWF New Zealand

It’s hard to imagine the sheer scale of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill catastrophe unless you’ve actually seen it. But this site gives you an idea of what it would mean if it happened here.

Taking Wellington as the centre of the spill, for example, it would stretch from Kaikoura to Napier. Think of the fisheries, the marine reserves, the whales and dolphins, the tourism industry…the list is endless and, frankly, terrifying, both for the environment and the people whose livelihoods would be destroyed.

I hope that the Gulf catastrophe will help focus attention in New Zealand on the issue of petroleum and mineral exploration at a time when the government seems determined to allow it to go ahead without adequate safeguards.

The government needs to define areas of outstanding biodiversity where exploration must not be allowed and define clear standards for managing the ocean environment as a whole as our Marine Advocate Bob Zuur argues here. 

My memories of growing up in the UK are punctuated by the news stories of oil spills: the Torrey Canyon, the Braer, the Amoco Cadiz. They were all accompanied by images of oiled seabirds and seals, and of volunteers clad in yellow protective clothing shovelling thick black sludge off beaches. While not exactly rust buckets, these ships were single hulled vessels moving huge quantities of crude oil in difficult environments.

Although drilling presents different risk to shipping, the point is that whenever hazards are created (such as large quantities of a highly damaging product), there are always risks. It is what we do about these risks that is important.

Whether it is moving huge quantities of crude oil – the Braer, which ran aground in Shetland in 1983, carried over 80,000 tonnes and the Amoco Cadiz, which ran aground in Brittany in 1978, had over 200,000 tonnes – or drilling the seabed, a proper assessment of the risks is vital.

If the water is deep, the wildlife globally important, and the techniques untested, then the risk is high. Better to avoid those places altogether. Because when accidents happen, the effects last for decades and it is often only through good luck that the damage is not worse.

The Braer was carrying light crude –if it had been heavy crude, the damage would have been much worse. And the prevailing south-westerly winds off Cornwall disappeared for days at the time of the Torrey Canyon disaster – had they blown as normal, much more oil would have ended up on Cornwall’s beaches. 

As most of the Gulf oil is still in deep water, we do not know how much will end up on beaches, and we do not know how much damage it is causing where it is.

For a while it looked like New Zealand would lead the world with an integrated marine management system that would guard against risks such as these. But today, over ten years after its Oceans Policy process was first launched with a fanfare, New Zealand has hardly progressed towards proper safeguards for our marine environment, the species that live there and the people that depend on it for their livelihoods.

We have no comprehensive, adequate and representative network of marine protected areas, and no assurances that areas of the marine environment that are important for wildlife will be off-limits to damaging or risky activities.

As Nick Smith acknowledged in his speech to the Reform in Paradise conference in early June, the government still has much to do to ensure our marine environment is protected and properly managed.

All pollution incidents are damaging and, although New Zealand has not escaped them altogether we have never had a major incident of the magnitude of the Exxon Valdez, the Deepwater Horizon or the Torrey Canyon.

The best safety regulations cannot prevent all accidents and so, short of banning all mineral extraction and transport throughout New Zealand’s seas, there will always be risks.

An extensive network of marine protected areas is critically important to ensure potentially damaging activities are kept well away from the most valuable places in our fragile marine environment and, where exploration and exploitation are allowed, the associated risks must be managed stringently.