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.
