Other events were probably more significant: the steps towards declaring a 200 nautical mile Australian Fishing Zone under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea; the commencement of oil and gas flow from the Bass Strait offshore field; and especially, the first great green wave of environmentalism of the late 1960s and early 1970s (Hammond, in press). All of these made us—the public, the scientists, the educators, the politicians—acutely aware of both the limitations on our knowledge of Australian marine environments, and the heavy responsibilities we bore, or would assume, for their protection and management.

Royal Society of Victoria