PORT LINCOLN, Australia — It has been called Australia’s answer to the Galápagos: a stretch of rich, pristine ocean facing the Antarctic that is home to calving whales and teeming fisheries that have turned local boat captains into tuna barons.

But now the waters, known here as the Great Australian Bight, or just the Bight for short, have drawn a different sort of resource industry: The Norwegian oil giant Statoil plans to start drilling by the end of 2019 to tap what experts call one of the world’s great remaining natural gas reserves.

Here in a country built on resource extraction, where the fossil fuel industry has a long history of political connections that often give it priority over the environment, people fear that this haven for some of the most unusual marine life in the world will be damaged and put at even greater risk from a spill.