This Workshop entitled 'Recreational fish­ing: what's the catch?' continues the series, commenced in 1985 by the Australian Society for Fish Biology. The major objec­tive of the Workshops has been to promote the opportunity, during the Society's Annual Conference, for the national fish and fisheries expertise to focus on an issue or issues of regional or national signifi­cance. The Workshop proceedings are now widely regarded as the benchmark document of current knowledge in the Workshop subject area.

The 1995 Workshop was extremely timely. Recreational fishing is a multi-million dollar industry, with over 4.5 million Australians estimated to participate each year. A number of recent State inquiries into recreational fishing and the draft National Policy for Recreational Fishing all highlight the dearth of informa­tion on major recreational fisheries. At the same time there has been an increased and more rigorous research effort.

This was the first extensive national Work­shop held in Australia focusing on aspects of assessing recreational fisheries and some of the crucial issues concerning the man­agement of these fisheries. It dealt with methods of estimating the catch, to the thornier issues of estimating value and resource allocation.

The Workshop commenced informally with a stimulating and provocative speech by well known fishing identity Rex Hunt. Dr Bob Kearney, Director of the New South Wales Fisheries Research Institute ' set the scene for the two-day meeting by courageously attempting to estimate the total Australian recreational catch for his keynote address. His summing-up was also of the highest quality. The Society would also like to acknowledge the contribution of international guest speakers, Laurel Teirney (MAFFisheries NZ), Rudy van der Elst (Oceanographic Research Insti­tute, Durban, South Africa), and Stephen Malvestuto (US).

These proceedings follow the format of recent years with papers delivered by panel members and followed by rapporteurs' reports of the ensuing discussions. Not sur­prisingly, for issues concerning recreational fishing, the latter were lively and thought provoking.

The Workshop was a great success as evi­denced by the Society releasing its first ever Media Release on key outcomes of the meeting. As always many people contrib­uted to its smooth running. Martine Kinloch and Julian Pepperell had the diffi­cult job of actually putting the whole thing together, as convenors of the Workshop. John Glaister was responsible for successful applications to funding bodies. Gina Newton chaired the local organising com­mittee and Phil Stewart was the Workshop Facilitator.

This workshop, entitled "Sustainable Fisheries through Sustaining Fish Habitat", continues the Australian Society for Fish Biology's workshop series and its established tradition of bringing together the country's leading experts to freely discuss specific fish and fishery themes of na­tional importance. Past workshops have pre­ceded the Society's Annual Conferences, and began with a meeting on "Australian Threat­ened Fishes" in Melbourne in 1985. Themes since then have covered diverse topics: "Ad­vances in Aquaculture", "The Use of By-catch Resources in Australia", "Scientific Advice for Managers: Getting the Message Across", "Tag­ging - Solution or Problem?", "Introduced and Translocated Fishes and their Ecological Ef­fects", "Legal Sizes and their use in Fisheries Management", "The Measurement of Age and Growth in Fish and Shellfish", "Larval Biol­ogy", and "Recruitment Processes".

Since 1988, the workshops have been gen­erously supported by the Fishing Industry Re­search and Development Council (now the Fisheries Research and Development Corpora­tion, FRDC). This support has ensured the at­tendance of overseas experts at the workshops, and has allowed professional editorial treatment of the published Proceedings. The Bureau of Rural Resources (now, Bureau of Resource Sci­ences, BRS) has also been most generous in contributing substantially to the costs of publi­cation of Proceedings.

These workshops, and their published Proceedings, are now recognised as benchmarks in the development of fish and fisheries science in Australia.