What’s to become of Victoria’s Gippsland Lakes commercial fishery?
By Ross Winstanley* Not content with their exclusive fishing access to every Victorian estuary, recreational fishers are now pushing for the closure of commercial fishing in the Gippsland Lakes. From the 1960s through the 1980s, Victoria’s annual 800 tonne Gippsland Lakes commercial fishery produced 80% of Australia’s black bream landings, averaging about 250 tonnes. Today, […]
Seed bank protects food crop genetics
Buried deep in the icy mountains of a remote island in Norway, is a seed storage facility that currently houses almost 1 million plant seeds from almost every country in the world. Located 100 meters inside a mountain on the island of Spitsbergen, in the remote Arctic Svalbard archipelago, 1,300 kilometres from the North Pole its purpose […]
Fishing by electrocution
Electric pulse fishing (also known as electrofishing or electrical trawling) is a trawl fishing technique used in Europe to target flatfish (sole) and shrimp. It involves the release of electric currents with a range of frequency, voltage, pulse polarity, pulse shape, and pulse duration combinations into the seabed to either immobilize fish so they do […]
Recycling fishing gear
All vessels in Australia have a responsibility not to pollute the sea and to be aware of the laws about oil and garbage pollution from vessels. Pollution of the marine environment by ships, including fishing vessels, is strictly controlled by the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships (known as MARPOL). To minimise […]
Austral Fisheries win Banksia award
SETFIA member Austral Fisheries have won the Banksia Foundation’s 2017 Small to Medium Business Sustainability Leadership Award, for their work within the Australian fisheries landscape over the past 20 years. Their work in Australia’s Northern Prawn and sub-Antarctic fisheries is explained in this video. These fisheries were some of the first in Australia to be […]
What’s a Zooplankton Hole?
A recent journal article in the Nature Ecology and Evolution journal titled, “Widely used seismic survey air gun operations negatively impact zooplankton” (Robert D. McCauley et al) investigated the effects of seismic surveys on zooplankton. Zooplankton underpin the health and productivity of global marine ecosystems. Zooplankton are a group of small animals including organisms whose […]
Trawl fleet makes 1 May baffler deadline
The 2017-18 fishing season started on 1 May and the newsletter can report that all board trawl vessels made the deadline to have new and improved seabird mitigations in place. Seabirds are attracted to fishing vessels by the sight and smell of fish and fish offal. They can be injured or killed when they collide […]
$$Bucks for bafflers
SETFIA is committed to sustainable fishing practices so members continually work to minimise their environmental impact while catching fresh fish for Australians. This work includes minimising interactions with seabirds. An interaction is any contact between the vessel and a seabird that causes injury, death or distress. In 2014 SETFIA secured Australian Government funding to trial a […]
SETFIA online course for fishers
SETFIA believes that training and development is of critical importance in achieving our strategic goals. The Association has run two courses called Implement and Monitor Environmentally Sustainable Work Practices (SFIEMS301A) and Manage and Control Fishing Operations (SFIFISH402c). 121 qualifications were issued to trawl fishermen and 160 fishers from other fisheries. Both courses were TAFE accredited […]
$100,000 Reason to Complete OnLine Learning
SETFIA is offering all south east commercial fishermen the opportunity to undertake an online course on “Understanding Commonwealth Marine Reserves”. The course is funded by Parks Australia and is specific to the South East Network of Protected Areas and it could potentially save you $100,000! The Brisbane Times reported that two years ago, a commercial […]