Lobster fisher Gary Ryan believes the public ought to know more about seismic surveying.
The technique involves shooting loud airwaves at the ocean floor to uncover subterranean oil and gas reserves.
"I just believe that if this was happening on land and the public could see the damage it was causing there would be an uproar," Mr Ryan said.
When energy giant Origin Energy decided to survey off the coast of Warrnambool in Victoria's south west in 2017, the community had little option but to accept it.
"At the time, we were compensated and it seemed like a reasonable figure," Mr Ryan said.
"But we accepted it because either we took it or we were going to get nothing."
Mr Ryan believes the lobster fishery has only just started to recover in the past two years.
While Mr Ryan's beliefs are speculative, studies have found seismic surveying does affect the ability of rock lobsters to flip themselves over if they are upside down, leaving them vulnerable to predation.
University of Queensland associate professor Rebecca Dunlop says the science is complex.
She studied the effects of seismic surveying on migrating humpback whales, which pass through the waters near Warrnambool, and found there were no significant effects.
"We found no evidence that there were significant population-level consequences of disturbance so running a full seismic survey through a migrating population of humpback whales," Dr Dunlop said.
She said current scientific literature did not support making blanket statements on whether seismic was broadly harmful or not.
"One size does not fit all — it never will," she said.
"We have so many different species out in the ocean that are going to respond a different way, and there are so many different factors that contribute to whether or not they respond, how they respond, what kind of magnitude their response are, that you would have to study every single species."
Now, Mr Ryan and other ocean users are concerned the marine environment will be up-ended again by plans to conduct another survey later this year.
New survey plans
French-owned geo-surveying company CGG last month began community consultation to undertake another survey of the seabed off the coast of Warrnambool.
The company needs to consult the community and lodge an environmental assessment plan before any surveying happens, which is not expected to take place before November.
The south-west coast of Victoria is not just home to the Twelve Apostles, a whale migration route, and a well-established rock lobster industry. It is also the base for five trawl fishers in Portland that haul up fresh fish from as far away as western Tasmania.
Off Victoria's eastern coast, Gippsland trawl fishers faced a similar battle with CGG to receive compensation in 2020, when a world-first study found catch rates were reduced by up to 99.5 per cent in the surveyed area.
Another study on how the seismic airguns affect pale octopus from the same survey area is yet to be released.
In late 2020, the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) ordered CGG to improve and standardise its compensation scheme for fishers.
Director of Klarite, a consulting company employed by CGG to liaise with the south-west Victorian community, Matt Smith said CGG would ensure no commercial fisher was worse off as a result of their planned survey.
"We are still early in our assessment process and we'd need to talk with affected fishers to design any compensation protocol so that it can be reliable and effective," Mr Smith said.
"CGG has previously compensated fishers in the Gippsland region for reasonable evidence-based claims and would do so again."
But Mr Ryan also wants the companies to acknowledge their methods are harmful to particular species and the broader environment.
"I realise the world revolves around gas and oil and all the rest of it. I just wish they would find a more environmentally friendly form of surveying the seabed to find this oil and gas," he said.
Framework fracas
At a national level, talks between the seismic and fishing industries have broken down.
Last year the federal government held several industry workshops to come up with a standard approach to compensating fishers to minimise conflicts on the water and during consultation.
The government last week released a voluntary "guidance framework" as a result of the talks, recommending surveyors should hold a "regional meeting" at least once a year.
It does not address a mandatory or standardised approach to compensation.
The ABC can reveal several fishing industry representatives left the bargaining table after the seismic surveying industry refused to acknowledge their technique damages the environment.
A spokesperson for the regulator NOPSEMA said the guidance encouraged collaboration between the industries.
"One of the important pieces of feedback received during the workshops was that there is a need for flexibility to develop compensation protocols suited to the circumstances of an individual seismic survey and the fisheries that may be affected," the spokesperson said.
"The published guidance framework provides for this."
The fishing industry representatives who left the workshops in protest were not told about the framework's release.
Meanwhile, Australian Petroleum Production and Exploration Association chief executive Samantha McCulloch welcomed the new guidelines.
"Improved coordination and information sharing is important to our ongoing co-existence with the fishing industry," she said.
