It was during the early nineties, around 1993, after I had been working as a deckhand on a long-lining boat that I applied my education as a former secondary school teacher to facts that were known to me in the Southern Shark Fishery, managed by the Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA).

Then a prominent shark researcher, Terry Walker, now professor, was working at MaFRI, (Marine and Freshwater Research Institute – now PIRVIC at Queenscliff, Victoria). He had proposed a model based on Catch per Unit Effort along with a model proposed by AFMA in an endeavour to place a charge on the shark long-lining sector.

From memory, the charges were US$3.80 and US$3.90 per hook (the fax we received these charges on has since faded).

My skipper, Maurice Hyslop of Newhaven, Victoria, who had a long and distinguished involvement in the fishery, commissioned me to undertake a strategy to combat what he saw as exorbitant charges being levied.

He had originally been involved in long-lining on his boat, ‘The Battle Axe’, and later became involved in down-sized coastal long-lining on a much smaller vessel, ‘Ida Lyn’, working out of San Remo/Newhaven, formerly a huge port in the shark fishing industry.

Maurice had tried the newly introduced gill-nets but realising the huge waste through drop-out of larger fish returned to long-lining. As he had adopted a more eco-based method of fishing that conserved the shark stocks and supported smaller bait fisheries, he believed he was being unjustly charged at US$3.80 and US$3.90 per hook as a resource tax as proposed by AFMA and MaFRI, which would amount to US$3,800 for a 1,000 hook allocation. The gill-net sector were seemingly charged a great deal less with their nets!

Data, quotas, charges and hooks

To take on AFMA and MaFRI was a huge challenge given the data they had accumulated over nearly 30 years of monitoring catches. For several weeks we looked at models constructed to try and visualise the huge difference in efficiency that nets had over long-lines.

They were truly walls of death for they not only caught school and gummy shark but a huge by-catch which later demanded the then-SSF to acquire quota into the south east trawl to compensate. Faced with an almost insurmountable task by a very well resourced AFMA and MaFRI, I finally stumbled on the solution: the apportion of catch the long-line sector took in comparison with the gill-net sector and their respective charges in a user pays system.

With around 277 operators in the Southern Shark Fishery (SSF) at the time, with approximately 96 hook sector commercial operators, I multiplied the number of hooks in the fishery and the revenue that would be raised. From catch data at the time, the hook sector took around 16 percent of the total catch. When I multiplied the charges that were to be levied by the new hook charges and compared them with the licence charges for gill-net operators, the total to be levied on the hook sector was in excess of those levied by the gillnet sector. (Again, remembering the hook operators only took 16 percent of the catch.) This was a ludicrous situation.

I proceeded to calculate the charges apportioned to the hook sector based on their percentage of catch and offered AFMA several models they could consider. As it happened, a very embarrassed AFMA had to withdraw their proposed hook charges and hook sector shark fishermen were then charged around US$0.89 per hook – which more appropriately reflected a charge commensurate with their apportioned share of the total catch.

Whilst working on this commission I was also amazed at the percentage of revenue levied from potential earnings in the Southern Shark Fishery. I looked across many other fisheries, Commonwealth and State, and realised that whilst many commercial operators were paying in the vicinity of five percent of their revenue as an access charge/management charge, the SSF gill-net operators were only paying around one to one and a half percent of their potential earnings.

I raised this with AFMA and was also referred to ABARE with my concerns for the whole levy system, as explained, was based on a cost recovery system with higher charges not deemed necessary.

I was amazed at this for there appeared no vision into significant levies for research or industry re-structure should buy-outs later be required as resource biomass became depleted.

At the time I proposed a transition period from gill-nets to long-lines over a five year period and such moneys could have been used to subsidise gill-net operators for consultancy fees, loss of income and other encumbrances during the five-year period. A direct sum of compensation, I believed, was not applicable as the shark fishermen were not losing their fishing rights, only encouraged to change their method of fishing. Also, gill-net fishermen, due to their method of fishing, did not support other Australian industries for all of their equipment was imported whereas long-lining supported several local industries, including local bay and inlet fishermen with the supply of bait.

Hooks were the only purchase that did not support local industries as they were imported. There were many other criticisms of gill-nets, including gear losses that continued to fish as walls of death but AFMA would not be entertained with our concerns, despite pleas by independent chairpersons who read our proposals tabled  at AFMA conferences.

It appeared monies were made available, additionally for such purposes, from some other source which certainly freed up gill-net operators, especially since their access charges were comparatively low; for example, an abalone licence holder paid around seven to nine percent for access although I believed this could be justified due to the amount of enforcement required in that industry.

Rock lobster operators on the Eastern Rock Lobster fishery paid around five percent management fees as did local bay and inlet fishermen. I believed AFMA had been quite irresponsible in their management when fees should have been raised to five percent in the SSF.

Over the 30-year period this would have provided for re-structure, should it have become necessary in the future. I believe this time has arrived!

Rolling AFMA on charges

Since “rolling” AFMA on their charges I have also watched the gill-net sector continue to fish whilst one of its prime commercial species, school shark, has been fished to levels of twelve percent and 18 percent of its original biomass.

At these levels a mechanism should activate whereby fishing should be halted when modelling demonstrates fish biomass falls below 20 percent of original biomass.

As nets are not selective, this could not occur although gill-net operators contend that certain areas support differing species? I have also been very critical of the use of gill-nets in the SSF as nets were a method of fishing developed to catch scale fish – species with a much higher fecundity, (reproduction rate), than school or gummy shark.

The efficiency of the nets has already been recognised with the voluntary removal of them from State waters within Victoria. A further reduction in length was also undertaken to reduce the catch take by 30 percent, from 600 metres to 420 metres - but from catch data published post that implementation the fishermen increased their effort to compensate.

I have also heard of many reported instances of nets crabbed-up, full of rock lobster, also entangled with larger sharks, full of unwanted and unviable commercial catches of elephant shark along with several other by-catch species, (the reason operators were required to buy scale fish quota), and entangled gear broken off.

Larger, breeding fish are entangled or trapped by the nostrils and die. They generally fall out of the nets as they are hauled and lost – not one fish but 40 potential fish.

This waste and the throwing overboard of fish surplus to quota is, I believe, criminal. As a person formerly involved in the shark industry, I believe the time has come for all to move to hooks. I offered this alternative years ago as under the watchful eye of skipper, Maurice Hyslop, I realised the time would come when more conservative action was required and industry needed to become proactive.

Instead, the southern shark and trap gillnet fishermen have succeeded in having more net units in the fishery for, when quota was introduced, they were allowed their full entitlement of nets – thereby allowing them to catch their quota faster.

There are no closed seasons to give migratory breeding fish a spell from the hounding of shark gill-nets and there was, at my last count, around a thousand 42-metre nets in the fishery which was enough to go from mainland Australia to Tasmania and back! This number has dropped back to 62 operators, each with ten nets, each 420 metres long, amounting to around 260km of nets – enough to still cross Bass Strait.

As indicated earlier, gill-nets were meant for catching fish that spawned hundreds of thousands of eggs and not for school and gummy shark which produuce around 25 -40 juveniles per year. Elephant fish also lay a small number of eggs, somewhere around ten to twenty, nowhere in the vicinity of scale fish.

I suspect the shark gill-nets are responsible for depleted numbers of this species as work by fisheries scientists in assessing the numbers appearing in nursery areas has prompted recreational bag limits to be amended from unlimited, to three fish and now one fish.

Lesson learned

I believe there is a lesson to be learned from these decreases in bag limit.

Not being involved in the industry since my skipper sold his Commonwealth licence I have been informed the 12 remaining hook sector operators have again been slugged with excessive charges? Hopefully this article will give them an insight into how to they might roll AFMA, for their management of the fishery, in my opinion, has been abysmal with quota management costly and ineffective!

Whilst I am also probably ‘shooting myself in the foot’ with the following information AFMA’s contempt for the local fishing industry also became evident when I was doing some consultancy work several years ago. I was looking at bringing Taiwanese vessels into Australian waters to fish Australian quota.

AFMA had no loyalty to the Australian fishing industry, only concern for the revenue collected for quota – regardless of who paid! As I have stated, this has probably shot me in the foot and possibly caused me significant personal future financial loss but I believe it is a matter that should be addressed.

With many commercial operators howling at mismanagement by AFMA of our Commonwealth and State fisheries through Memorandums of Understanding and Offshore Constitutional Settlements maybe it’s time for the Sates of Australia to review their decisions with these matters, too?  

In closing, I have to agree with Walter Starck and start to ask questions that with such an abundant coastline and huge EEZ, why are our commercial fishermen being restricted and licences being bought out?

Maybe it’s time for a Royal Commission into the commercial fishing industry of Australia for it is a food producing industry and its sustainability and very existence must be promoted, protected and secured.

Maybe it’s time issues were examined more closely, for the science from Australia’s most brilliant minds sits on shelves gathering dust whilst politicians and bureaucrat managers play gods, belt commercial operators around the ears with unrealistic charges that must eventually come out of the resource whilst the general public miss out on access to their own sustainable resources!

For me, I moved on from AFMA and shark fishing ten years ago, now focussing on seals and their impact on our marine resources – another seemingly  insurmountable obstacle as challenging as it was endeavouring to  altering the direction by AFMA with the shark fishery!

Australian fishery managers are not progressing beyond management at the margin nor moving into innovative and revolutionary change. Management today, I believe, is just the same old same old – moving forward with tunnel vision from the same bureaucrats, constrained by ridiculous legislation with no lateral vision and little to no accountability!  

© John McDougall, Fisheries Consultant, Australia, 2010

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