THE latest decision to ban the use of all wire traces on fishing gear within 800 metres of the shore from south of Mandurah to Two Rocks (the entire Perth metropolitan coast) has continued a run of poor decisions that beggar belief.
When I was last over East earlier this year for a lures expo I was asked constantly – “How could WA fisheries management go from first to worst in such a tragic way.”
In my opinion, the answer is two-fold. Firstly, poor leadership in the Fisheries Department saw all stakeholders lose faith in their ability to fairly manage the resource. This left the department with no allies when Labor Premier Mark McGowan created mega departments and lumped fisheries in with Agriculture. And as happened everywhere, this fatally flawed experiment has been foisted upon fishing – Agriculture dismantled activities, cut budgets and generally asset stripped what was once probably the best Fisheries Department in the southern hemisphere. Meanwhile research fundamentalism and using selective data to support a control agenda while ignoring any and all social or economic factors created an environment where a recovery in demersal fish stocks (that really just needed a nudge) was turned into a nine month closure proposal and the fisheries equivalent of a Texas Death match.
This was coupled, in my opinion, with two disappointing Ministers. Dave Kelly was eventually demoted and sent out of Cabinet altogether. He was replaced by the now infamous Don Punch – a Minister who has now done what I thought impossible – turned Dave Kelly into the second least popular fisheries Minister in living memory.
This latest debacle is just the latest in a string of extraordinary decisions that most five year olds would think as of using a sledgehammer to break a walnut.
The “Punch” line of this sick joke is ‘”This reform is simple, effective, easy to understand and most importantly puts community safety first.” Of course – making tailor anglers miserable to pander to paranoid local governments’ IS simple and if making yourself even more of a derisive character is your goal – it’s effective too.
Ok cue the canned laughter. The Minister is promising that by banning wire traces when fishing for tailor and mackerel within 800 metres of shore he’s made Perth safe from shark attacks?
Where does this leave our glorious leader not if, but when another attack happens? He promised that evil recreational fishers would bear 100% of the management impact from his decision. And the absolute truth is that there is EXACTLY the same minuscule risk of being attacked by a shark AFTER this draconian measure is introduced as it is RIGHT NOW!!
To put some context, there are a very small number of social media heroes who think it’s cool to catch big sharks near swimming beaches. Karen’s and serial pests have complained and almost all recreational fishers believe that these few are greatly impacting the ‘social licence’ of recreational fishing. But note this is about 30 or so of 800,000 anglers in this state, the latter majority of whom support some action to control those same “look here” social media types, who do us all a disservice by paying lip service to “best practice” and commonsense.
The Minister believes that catching a shark changes its behaviour. Most research says this is not the case and if any behavioural change occurs at all, such interactions may in fact cause sharks to leave the area. But rather than work with recreational fishing groups to tag these sharks and track their movements, the Minister has yet again gone into full on attack mode.
More than a decade’s worth of research by the University of Sydney has revealed how politicians manipulate highly emotional incidents like shark bites to influence public sentiment and protect their own interests. And to say nothing about the increasing phenomenon of greenies getting into the water to pat a shark on the head for social media. Research shows that even whale sharks exhibit stress behaviour that might affect reproduction with repeated interactions….. But Karen’s (and others) want to dive with whale sharks so its ok.
Recfishwest and prominent WA angler Scott Coghlan proposed the eminently suitable compromise to ban all wire traces longer than 30 cm – affecting those targeting large sharks but allowing ordinary anglers to fish for species with teeth that don’t attack humans, with gear readily available and in common use.
This was apparently rejected because it was too hard for Fisheries Officers to measure? REALLY?
I’m expected while standing in an awash intertidal zone to measure a Roe’s abalone in a rock crevasse within a mm before removing it but a Fisheries Officer can’t measure 30 cm (remember the old school ruler)? A number of fish size limits (including tailor in WA) share this confounding measure. These are the same Fisheries Officers who know exactly how far 800 metres from shore is and now require you to pull up your line so they can make sure you only have ONE hook if possibly fishing for demersal species as demanded by our Department…
The Minister concludes by urging anglers to go to their tackle store for advice on alternatives to wire trace. ONE of the problems with this is that a number of tackle stores went belly up after the Minister’s previous intervention. These days in WA – expecting the worst is generally not enough.
Frank Prokop – author of 17 books on fishing. Fisheries manager NSW and WA. CEO Recfishwest 14 years. Director on such diverse entities as the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation, National Oceans Advisory group, Perth Wildcats and WA Sports Federation. And yes I have a science degree too….
