Indigenous business development opportunities and impediments in the fishing and seafood industry - 'Wave to plate' establishing a market for Tasmanian cultural fisheries
Aboriginal wild catch is aspirational, seasonal and culture-dependent. For these reasons, it does not compete well against large-scale, industrial fishing operations. Addressing the FRDC’s Indigenous Sector strategy to improve understanding and engagement that ‘best support individual and community economic development’ (FRDC 2015), this project aims to develop a niche market of boutique seafoods, together with investigating how the arts and tourism sectors can foster fisheries management for greater Indigenous community benefit.
A Tasmanian Aboriginal engagement framework in fisheries has not yet been developed by government (Lee 2016, in press). This project will create the conditions for extensions development, based upon resetting engagement terms between Indigenous peoples and government, providing a toolkit of self-determining strategies for regional development. Economic models for future development of fisheries can build upon the capacity of Indigenous communities to translate value into benefit in subsequent projects, such as employment opportunities within the network chain of wild catch procurement to presentation.
There is a need to provide best practice guidance that demonstrates Australia’s commitment to international obligations, such as 2007’s UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In Australia, building on the growing jurisprudence that affirms native title rights to land, the High Court in 2013 extended such rights to commercial fishing in the Torres Strait in its Akiba v Commonwealth decision (Butterly 2013). However, judicial recognition of Indigenous fishing or other marine-based rights does not in itself provide specific guidance on how those environmental resources should be managed culturally and economically.
Final report
- access to marine resources for Aboriginal Tasmanians;
- the governance forms, such as a proposed Indigenous Fisheries Advisory Committee and cultural marine planning unit, to assist in decision-making that provide fairness, equity,transparency and opportunities for Aboriginal Tasmanians to develop cultural fisheries that suit local conditions;
- the models for Indigenous rights to resources and business enterprise that provides a best fit for Aboriginal Tasmanian regional development and fisheries management;
- the research directions that require a multi-disciplinary focus; and
- the types of partnerships that can aid in the establishing a market for cultural fisheries.
Meeting sustainability expectations: translating and aligning objectives, reporting and evaluation of the performance of Australian fisheries
An economic analysis of management options for tuna fishery development in the east coast tuna longline fishery of the AFZ
SCRC: PhD : Managing fisheries to maximise profits by understanding and reducing variable costs of fishing
There are several reasons that targeted research on the variable cost of fishing is warranted as part of the bioeconomic activities of the theme. First, some fisheries regulations have evolved over long periods with lower fishing costs, a revision of these could increase the profitability of the fishery and may be necessary to ensure economic viability into the future. Secondly, fuel is one of the largest variable cost factors in most fisheries and has proven to be highly volatile in price over the last few years; extensive evidence suggests that fuel prices will continue to rise at rates significantly faster than most other costs. Third, the economic flows from fuel consumption tend to provide a lower contribution to GDP than other variable costs such as labour (due to the export nature of the cost); consequently disproportionate increases in fuel prices may result in a lower fishery contribution to GDP.