Profile of the author

David C. Cook, B.Sc. (Hons 1) Zool., Post-grad. Diploma Fisheries Mgt., Diploma Conservation & Land Mgt.

• Date of birth: February 1951
• Birth Place: Dunoon, Scotland
• Nationality: dual citizenship, Australian & British

After five years practical experience in fisheries research, development and management in PNG, he won an open National Environmental Research Council scholarship from the British Overseas Development Administration in 1980 to undertake studies for the Post-graduate Diploma in Fisheries Management. This course was developed by ODA specifically for Fisheries Officers from tropical developing nations and members of the Commonwealth. Mr. Cook graduated as top student of the year in 1981.

Between 1975 and December 1990 Mr. Cook worked for the PNG government as a fisheries officer at various levels for a total of 12 years (5 years plus 7 years, with a 2-year 6 month break), then for the Hong Kong government as a fisheries officer (8 years, January 1991 to January 1999) and as a private consultant and contractor from 1999 to 2012. Agencies he completed assignments for include the Food & Agriculture Organisation, Asian Development Bank, the United Nations and the Natural History Section of the British Broadcasting Commission. He has also undertaken a number of private fisheries consultancy contracts.

Experience with Artificial Reef Research and Deployment

Mr Cook commenced the Hong Kong Government’s Artificial Reef (AR) Program, in or around 1995, as the Fisheries Habitat Enhancement Project (FISHAB). Leading up to this, he undertook an extensive literature survey and official, HK government-funded dive surveys of existing AR projects in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Philippines. These projects were run by the respective fishery departments and /or universities of the countries who hosted Dave’s visits.

He also attended an AR international conference in Japan and, as team leader, with HK Cantonese support colleagues, carried out extensive pre-AR-deployment surveys of the New Territory’s inshore  fish habitats, including acoustic surveys, dive surveys of fish species abundance, local commercial and artisanal fishing methods and catches. The results were presented to the international PACON 97 Resources Development Symposium; the published paper is available on-line here, (pp 444 to 445) under the section ‘Environmental Issues and the Sustainable Development of Coastal Waters’.

Mr Cook wrote the original government project application for a large (over US$10 million) AR project to upgrade “his” FISHAB project, which for political reasons was re-named the “Artificial Reef Project”. The renaming was much to Mr Cook’s disappointment, preferring the focus to be on habitat enhancement rather than solely, artificial reefs.

He also wrote the first government contracts for the deployment of ARs. This included the thorough preparation and sinking, in carefully designated sites, of 20 (yes, twenty) ex-smugglers’ coastal shipping vessels, up to 140 ft in length.

Following this, with the AR team of Cantonese fisheries colleagues, Mr Cook conducted post-deployment SCUBA surveys of the AR in 1997 to 1998, recording settlement of marine life on the AR. Mr Cook left the project in 1998, to migrate to Australia. Keith Wilson, the AR Project administrator, continued the project for some years afterwards.

In 2011, Keith Wilson won the contract to undertake rebreather dive surveys to assess whether the ARs were contributing to fish abundance and production in Hong Kong waters. Twelve years after leaving the project, in 2011, Mr Cook assisted Mr Wilson with almost a month’s diving using rebreather apparatus on this survey and was thrilled to see the abundance of fish and other marine life on the ARs.

The benefits of the AR were apparent, including the return of good numbers of several high-value fish species, such as snapper and grouper present as adult fish, which had had either not been recorded in his intensive, pre-deployment fishing and dive surveys, or were very scare and of small size (again, see the proceedings of PACON 97. pp 444 to 455).

The above extensive experience researching and developing ARs was life-changing. It left Dave with the conviction that a carefully designed fish habitat enhancement project in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, using AR and fish aggregation devices in inshore, non-trawled, coastal areas including yellow and green zones would:

• help take the recreational fishing pressure off the reef,
• open up alternative species to recreational fishers,
• increase fish production and inshore catches,
• reduce fuel costs and time travelling,
• enable much shorter-lasting and therefore more frequent (morning only) fishing trips,
• increase recreational and tourism opportunities and all the trickle down benefits,
• be very cost effective.

To become more employable from a home base in Wonga Beach, whilst his children were in their early teens, Mr Cook completed a diploma in Conservation and Land Management at Innisfail TAFE, and subsequently worked on contract for three years as Daintree Conservation Manager for the not-for-profit, publicly-funded conservation organisation, Rainforest Rescue before leaving to resume further overseas fisheries consultancy work back in PNG.

Mr Cook has an sound knowledge of Indo-pacific fish species and their natural history, both commercial food fishes and other species not normally used as food by western Europeans. He also has a good knowledge of marine and estuarine habitats from 30 years fishing, diving and observing fish, marine habitats and regional, artisanal and small-scale fishing methods and gear.

He has used this knowledge to help establish and/or improve fisheries data collection programs in Papua New Guinea, Hong Kong and East Timor and promote the establishment of marine protected areas (MPA’s) in both Hong Kong and East Timor.

Mr Cook, as Collaborator 313, has contributed over 300 photographs of fish species, mostly underwater shots, to the Fish database Fishbase . He also photographed over 128 marine food fish species in East Timor and using these local photographs, prepared a fish identification training manual for the fisheries department in East Timor.

As senior fisheries extension officer in Papua New Guinea and as Fisheries Officer in charge of Fisheries Training and Development in Hong Kong, training needs assessment and provision of training courses were a major part of Mr Cook’s duties. This included a strategic planning workshop for the combined private and public fisheries sectors in East Timor as well as a fish identification workshop for government and university fisheries staff of East Timor.