Picture: Greenpeace
I AM a member of the Australian Fisheries Management Authority committee that paved the way for the super trawler Margiris/Abel Tasman.
As a member of the Small Pelagic Fishery Resource Assessment Group, I must express my deep personal concern about the inadequacy of the very limited research used to double the jack mackerel east quota to commercially justify the super trawler.
The decision suggested by the Margiris proponent, a member of the same committee, raised a conflict of interest situation currently under investigation by the Commonwealth Ombudsman.
The data on which the quota decision relied was 10 years old and the stocks of fish sampled had long since gone, to be replaced by stocks that remain unresearched.
The scientist who did the research warns in his report that the data are largely imprecise and hence need to be treated with due caution.
He also says he had an inadequate number of samples.
There is a complete absence of research into stocks of small pelagic fish such as redbait and jack mackerel in Commonwealth waters off southern Western Australia, South Australia and the Great Australian Bight – exactly where the super trawler’s operators tell us they propose to fish first before heading east to other, inadequately researched stocks off New South Wales and Tasmania.
The simple fact is that the federal Environment Minister’s proposed amendments to the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act are sensible.
They will allow time for the comprehensive and rigorous research into small pelagic fish stocks essential to protect the Australian small pelagic fishery from overfishing, local depletions and damaging and depleting bycatches by the Margiris or any other super trawler in future.
The size of fish populations must be determined before exploitation to determine whether they will survive large-scale commercial fishing and remain ecologically sustainable.
If they are overfished, there is a substantial risk that their depletion will severely damage or collapse the marine ecosystems around the southern half of Australia.
Studies show that small pelagic fish stocks in other parts of the world have been fished to near extinction or commercial extinction by the Margiris and her sister ships.
Read the full article on The Examiner website here
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