Germein Island Sanctuary Zone (SZ-9), West Coast Bays Marine Park (South Australia)

The ninth and last sanctuary zone of the West Coast Bays Marine Park, and the only one our record was missing. It is not a conventional offshore no-take box: the Department for Environment and Water's own boundary document states that “Sanctuary Zone 9 is Venus Bay Conservation Park – Germein Island” and publishes no coordinate table for it (the columns read “NA”), so the zone is the footprint of the island conservation park inside Venus Bay on the west coast of Eyre Peninsula. Sanctuary rule (l) of regulation 8(3) of the Marine Parks (Zoning) Regulations 2012 forbids removing from the zone the whole or any part of a plant or animal, harming a plant or animal in it, using berley, or any act preparatory to those things, with the Note recording the consequence: “a person must not engage in a fishing activity in the zone”. The 1 October 2014 grandfathering exception has long expired. The Department's “Activities and Uses in Marine Park Zones” table lists “Spear fishing” as not allowed in a sanctuary zone, so the water around Germein Island is closed to the speargun even though the whole surrounding bay is a habitat protection zone in which spearfishing is permitted. In practice the closure bites on anyone wading, snorkelling or shore-diving off the island.