The fishing and the oil/gas industries have rights to operate their respective businesses in the marine environment. At sea, there is a degree of spatial/temporal overlap between marine seismic activity and established fishing grounds. For shared access to work effectively, a high level of respect, cooperation, communication, coordination and compromise is required between industries.

With some notable exceptions, many fishing operators in areas of high offshore prospectivity report this doesn’t always occur. They feel as a result, their businesses are negatively impacted, with little if any recognition by the oil/gas industry. Importantly this does not only relate directly to loss of catch, possibly arising from seismic activity, but to disruptions at an operational and business level including; time and resources to input into the process, reduction of fishing opportunities during peak/open seasons and marketing/staffing issues (onshore and offshore) due to unplanned variations in fishing activity. Oil and gas explorers also report that interactions can negatively impact on their operations at high cost.

These issues were highlighted at a FRDC supported ‘Empowering’ workshop in 2011 attended by the fishing and oil/gas industries, agencies and researchers. It was agreed that a project designed to examine and improve processes and policies to minimise impacts of seismic surveys on operations and businesses was a priority.

Since then, National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA) was established. This authority is the national regulator for a range of offshore oil and gas operations, including environmental management.

DPI Vic indicated the project approach is a long time coming and stressed the need for discussions before exploration leases are released, the benefits in educating both sectors on impacts of their activities on the other and the value this will provide in forward planning for both sectors to minimise negative interactions and optimise efficiency and profitability.

The seafood industry operates in a diverse and dynamic environment and although the volume produced in Australia is small by world standards, the quality of our product and sustainability of our practices are globally recognised. For the seafood industry to continue to be a world leader in seafood production and quality there must be an opportunity to learn from each other and plan for the future.

The role of Seafood Directions is to provide an opportunity for stakeholders of the seafood industry to review and discuss priority issues and future planning and development.

This need is supported by key stakeholders of the seafood industry, as is evident by the number of delegates previously attending the biennial conference.

Despite several successful Seafood Directions conferences there is a need to look at how the conference is run and what its focus is. There is a real need to engage the whole supply chain sector from fisher to consumer.

In recent years, the environmental performance of the fishing industry, in general, and more visible sectors like bay and inlet fisheries in particular, has come under increasing scrutiny. Concurrently, a number of initiatives have or are being implemented that directly address this environmental performance. These include SCFA's framework for implementation of ESD in Australia's fisheries, changes to Schedule 4 of the Wildlife Protection Act and the new Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, Seafood Services Australia initiatives, eco-labelling such as the Marine Stewardship Council, and environmental management planning at more local levels.

With the success of the buy-out removing most of the latent and part time operators from bay and inlet fisheries, it is critical that those fishers who chose to remain in the industry take proactive steps that will ensure their security of tenure in the fishery and certainty for the resource they harvest and the environment they operate in.

As a first step towards this goal, the Bay and Inlet fishers held an Industry workshop in July 2000 to identify and discuss the issues that need to be addressed to ensure their fisheries have a sustainable future. After that meeting an application was made to FRDC for funding to facilitate the progression towards Environmental certification for the Bay and Inlets fisheries. That application was unsuccessful. Since then bay and inlet fishers have canvassed many options for resourcing an EMS process for their fishery cumulating in another workshop held at Welshpool in October 2001 and the forming of an all encompassing state bay and inlet fishery association, Eco-Fish Victoria.

Although the fisheries in the bays and inlet are managed separately, and there are separate industry/regional associations, the issues confronting industry are common to all bays and inlets. Consequently, industry members agreed that these issues should be dealt with on a state-wide basis through establishing one industry body to facilitate the development and implementation of EMS’s for Victorian bay and inlet fishers. That new Industry association will have a close affiliation with SIV

Importantly the Victorian bay and inlet sector of industry have reached a consensus regarding hard decisions for a sustainable future for them and their fishery. Their commitment is to ensure all fishery activities measure-up against best practice when it comes to managing the resource, by-catch, habitat and the marine environment.