Cumulative impacts across fisheries in Australia's marine environment
Capability & Capacity: 2024 Electric & Hybrid Marine Expo North America and Conference
Compilation of information for the US Marine Mammal Protection Act Comparability Finding process
Informing the structural reform of South Australia's Marine Scalefish Fishery
South Australia’s Marine Scalefish Fishery (MSF) is currently undergoing a strategic review with the principal aim of restructuring the fishery in order to ensure its long-term sustainability and economic viability. The heterogeneous mixture of participants, fishing devices, licence conditions and regulations associated with this fishery makes the tasks of administering and managing it extremely challenging. These complexities intertwined within a highly dynamic fleet that is capable of shifting fishing effort amongst species and regions often alters the emphasis of its overarching management. Industry and Government are working collaboratively to address the inherent complexities of the fishery through firstly developing a mechanism to rationalise the fleet, then reforming its overall structure, and ultimately refining its future management. In order to optimise this structural reform, it is necessary to disentangle and understand the fleet dynamics of this extremely complex fishery. This project aims to explore the implications of strategic management options (e.g. regionalisation, licensing, ITQ’s and ITE’s) on the future structure and viability of the MSF, from resource sustainability, economic and social perspectives.
Final report
This study was undertaken by the South Australia Research and Development Institute (SARDI) in collaboration with PIRSA Fisheries and Aquaculture, BDO EconSearch, the Marine Fishers Association (MFA), Fishwell Consulting and University of Canberra. This project guided the reform of South Australia’s commercial Marine Scalefish Fishery (MSF) by providing scientific advice and analyses to underpin its implementation. The MSF is a multi-sector, multi-gear and multi-species fishery, making any management reform a complex and difficult process. Both the sustainability of key stocks and commercial fishery’s economic performance have been deteriorating over a 20-year period; significantly influenced by fishery overcapitalisation. Simply put, there were too many fishers and not enough fish to support a vibrant and sustainable commercial fishery. This was addressed through the three ‘pillars’ of the reform: regionalisation, unitisation and rationalisation. These pillars were reflected in the reform with: 1) the creation of four new zones of management; 2) implementation of individual transferable quotas (ITQs) for appropriate ‘Tier 1’ stocks; and 3) rationalisation of the commercial MSF fleet by removing one third of licences through a voluntary licence surrender program (VLSP). These pillars were supported by research on the biological, economic and social carrying capacity of the fishery. The reform was implemented on 1 July 2021 resulting in a fishery that has regional management with appropriate output controls and a reduced fleet size.
Establishing a national end of life fishing/aquaculture gear recovery system for Australia
Building on the circularity discussions and work being undertaken by FRDC and the industry, this project seeks to undertake the legwork required to establish a nationwide on-demand End of life (EOL) fishing gear recovery system for Australia and pilot it in key locations. The materials that many nets and ropes are made of are highly valuable and recyclable and in fact in many other countries, is already being recycled or remanufactured. Until now, having a national system has been cost prohibitive due to the large distances and need for economies of scale and limited local buyer interest. As a part of the national targets set by the Australian Government relating to plastics use and recycling, commercial fishing and aquaculture sectors have been exploring how to move to a circular economy model and reduce plastic inputs through a variety of projects run by FRDC and others. However, with fishing gear the biggest plastic polymer input, and contamination challenges, there has yet to be a suitable system established.
This project seeks to enable the opportunities that addressing EOL gear provides in Australia to the commercial fishing and aquaculture sector through the establishment of an effective EOL fishing gear recovery system for the country to reduce the landfill costs to industry. It seeks to build on the learnings from previous projects as well as the ten years of experience of our partner Bureo has in in operating an EOL fishing gear recovery program. Bureo currently have an EOL gear recovery system active in 9 countries.
The key objectives are:
● By the end of 2026 there is an effective end-of-life fishing/aquaculture gear recovery system implemented across key fishing ports, and key aquaculture centres benefiting regional communities and fisheries conservation and assisting the Australian Government to address plastic recovery/recycling targets.
● By the end of 2024, the enabling environment for an effective and fit for purpose EOL fishing/aquaculture gear recovery system is in place within Australia, with commencement of recycling underway in key pilot locations.