The East Coast Trawl Fishery (ECTF) is spread over a large geographical area (from the Torres Strait to the Queensland/New South Wales border), and comprises a large number of small independent fishers. Importantly, it is one of Australia's largest fisheries and has an annual volume of 10,000 tonnes...

Since 2000 the use of bycatch reduction devices (BRDs) and turtle excluder devices (TEDs) has been a mandatory requirement in most tropical prawn trawl fisheries in Australia. Despite this period of mandatory use, the number of BRD designs has remained largely unchanged and their performance can, at...