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Fisheries status report shows good & bad

SENATOR Richard Colbeck was no doubt very happy to be able to escape from the controversy surrounding the small pelagic fishery and the possible role of super trawlers in it by being able to issue a press release containing some good news, namely that the latest ABARES fishery status reports show that no solely Commonwealth managed fisheries are subject to overfishing for the first time in eight years.

That’s good. Well done AFMA. “Subject to overfishing” means that harvesting in a particular year for a particular species could lead to it being “overfished”. “Overfished” means that the level of harvesting poses an unacceptable risk to a species’ biomass.

Some more good news and statistics to spin your head. In 2011, in fisheries solely managed by the Commonwealth, three were subject to overfishing and seven were overfished. In 2013, the respective numbers are zero and six. For fisheries jointly managed with States, Territories and other countries, the 2011 figures are six and 11, and the 2013 figures three and 11. So the jointly managed fisheries haven’t improved, at least on these measures, at the rate the solely managed have.

So far so good?

OK, but there are a few worrying problems highlighted in the report. In the Western Tuna and Billfish (WTBF) jointly managed fishery, striped marlin have moved from being classified as “uncertain” to “subject to overfishing”. In the Eastern Tuna and Billfish Fishery, bigeye tuna have moved from “not overfished” to “overfished.” There are also concerns noted about the mortality status (“uncertain”) of a number of species of interest to anglers, including broadbill swordfish, blue-eye trevalla and eastern gemfish.

In the case of free-ranging oceanic species such as tuna, marlin and swordfish, there are issues at play beyond the scope of an Australian fisheries management authority to fully control … namely legal and illegal fishing activities undertaken beyond our territorial waters, with or without the consent of other nations’ fisheries regulators. But the difficulty for our guys is how to balance off competing economic and political interests.

At Fisho, we’d dearly love to see our Federal government bite the bullet the way some South and Central American nations have and say “no commercial marlin, swordfish and selected species of tuna” fishing within our territorial waters. They’re too valuable as species in their own right as apex predators, and to the recreational fishing sector and the industries it supports, to harvest in our waters. A much more effective strategy than drawing a few boxes on maps and designating them marine reserve “no-take” zones, you’d argue.

And that’s where AFMA is caught. It has the twin objectives of maintaining fish stocks at ecologically sustainable levels and to maximise the net economic return (NER) of the fisheries it regulates to the Australian community.

The catch is of course that fisheries and agriculture ministers, particularly in this current government, seem to equate that NER solely to commercially harvesting and selling fish and annual easily measured $ revenue – admittedly at levels underpinned by research – rather than considering the bigger future picture: sustainable rec fishing, tourism, jobs created and maintained in supporting industries.

Sure, that’s harder to quantify and measure, but it surely must be the future.

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