WET and windy Sydney winter days have at least provided an opportunity to wade into two really comprehensive recent reports from the NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI), the Survey of Recreational Fishing in New South Wales and the ACT, 2013/14, and the Status of fisheries resources in NSW 2013-14.
They’re 150 and 391 pages respectively, so if you’d like to run through them then go to the Fisheries section of the DPI website. For now, here’s some observations on findings and figures from both documents on our catch and fishing participation rates. Details on which species look to be in trouble (from the Status report) will have to wait for a future column.
The new Survey used much the same telephone / interview / sample techniques as the 2000/01 national survey but the analysis appears to have become much more sophisticated and findings on total catch and harvest and retained rates seem far more plausible. This time the estimates on “undesirable” species like rock cale, kelpies and wirrahs seem believable, as detailed in the harvest / release tables which appear as appendices.
Some overall figures:
- Estimated release rate for all species caught, 44% (over 75% for Australian bass, Murray cod, mulloway, snapper and wrasse/gropers).
- Release rates on total key species up from 30% to 43% and key finfish from 52% to 59%.
- An overall estimated catch rate drop from over 37,000,000 species members in 2000/01 to just over 14,000,000 in 2013/14; that’s a 62% decrease in numbers caught while the decrease in effort (days fished) is 37%.
- Participation rates in fishing have declined from 16.6% of the age 5+ years segment of the population to 11.7%, consistent with other states and territories.
- Lure, jig and fly fishing as methods have doubled from 10% to 20%.
The revised recreational harvest estimate figures from 2000/01 to 2013/14 can be seen in the Status report. Here’s five examples of popular species with the estimated harvest numbers of fish for the two surveys:
- Mulloway 79,000 down to 21,000
- Tailor 880,000 down to 190,000
- Silver trevally 250,000 down to 49,000
- Luderick 622,500 down to 250,000
- Yellowfin bream 1,500,000 down to 614,000.
That seems more realistic. But…the Survey still estimates that more dusky flathead, sand flathead, mulloway, tailor and kingies were harvested by the rec sector than the commercial in 2013/14, although rates for bream, snapper and sand whiting are now estimated to be less, and Australian salmon and silver trevally much less.
