The Queensland East Coast Trawl Fishery Management Plan, was completed and introduced on 21st December, 2000, with the Management Plan’s Regulatory Impact Statement released October 2000. The plan sets performance criteria for a 40% reduction in bycatch and a 25% reduction in damage to benthos. Environment Australia also sets criteria on the sustainability of (1) target species, (2) retained bycatch (by-product), and (3) discarded bycatch species from trawl fisheries; a key factor of which is the total mortality on these species caused by the fishing operation. FRDC are currently funding QDPI research (FRDC#2000/170) to describe and quantify trawl bycatch in Queensland and the preliminary effects of bycatch reduction devices (BRDs) on the bycatch.
“Hoppers” are product-quality and cost-efficiency enhancement devices that are being progressively introduced into the South Australian, Western Australian, and Northern Prawn Fishery, and have been fitted by a small number of trawlers on the Queensland East Coast. These devices are recommended in the 1997 QCFO (QSIA) sponsored ISO Best Practice manual for onboard handling of prawn catch. Anecdotal reports suggest that these devices not only enhance product quality but significantly increase the survival of bycatch species that are caught by the trawl net (despite BRD’s), because the catch is dropped into a tank of fresh sea-water rather than onto a dry sorting-tray.
Therefore there is a need to pro-actively evaluate and document the effect of Hoppers on survival of discarded bycatch to ensure that the Queensland Prawn Trawl fleet gains maximum recognition for the “environmental credits” accrued as Hoppers are progressively introduced. This would provide an added bonus to a process already underway as a commercial evolution in trawl fisheries around Australia. Such information could also act as an environmental incentive, apart from the product quality and cost consideration, for trawler operators to fit Hoppers.
There is a particular need in the case of the smaller inshore boats involved in the Queensland East Coast banana fishery. Here there is considerable community pressure for inshore closures to cover local and tourist destination beaches, in response to discarded bycatch washing up after trawling operations. Appropriately sized non-mechanised Hoppers are currently under development but these will need to be independently evaluated to ensure that the community is satisfied that they will reduce bycatch mortality, ie no dead fish on politically sensitive beaches.
