Show your support for Port Phillip Bay fishers
In November, the Victorian Government will seek to ban commercial net fishing in Port Phillip Bay. This means Victorians will no longer have access to fresh, local and affordable seafood. Read more here: Save Bay Seafood To show your support for Port Phillip Bay commercial fishers: visit the web page www.siv.com.au/savebayseafood and sign the online petition […]
Whiting machine now filleting
The Lakes Entrance Fisherman’s Co-operative has invested in a fantastic new automated school whiting filleting machine. This machine was adapted from Scandinavian technology and at full speed can fillet three whiting a second. Dale Sumner, Co-op General Manager explained, “eastern school whiting is a large volume local species that for many years was packed whole […]
Snapper under control
Snapper has been small part of the South East Trawl Fishery’s catch for more than 100 years and is an unavoidable part of the sector’s 10,000 tonne catch of other species. There is also a separate, healthy commercial snapper catch in Port Phillip Bay licenced by Victoria which catches around 130 tonnes. Snapper is an […]
Fishing industry proposes roughy management
Previous newsletter articles have explained how CSIRO’s acoustic optical system (AOS) surveys have found 30-48,000 tonnes of orange roughy on two hills east of Tasmania. Based on this, and within the context of the fishery’s harvest strategy, the AFMA Commission has now set the eastern roughy total allowable catch (TAC) at 465 tonnes and the […]
NZ orange roughy fishery seeks 3rd party sustainability certification
Three of New Zealand’s orange roughy fisheries have entered the lengthy and rigorous Marine Stewardship Council sustainability assessment process. New Zealand’s Ministry of Primary Industry and the industry association the Deepwater Group have been working together for the past ten years to better manage and rebuild the orange roughy stocks, and are now looking to […]
2014 Fishery Independent Survey Finishes
Catches in the South-East are controlled by quotas which are based on assessments of fish stocks. For many years, industry, managers and researchers have recognised the problems with using catch and effort data from commercial logbooks as the main index of abundance for SESSF species. This has been particularly the case in the South-East where […]
Survey finds 10 million orange roughy off eastern Tasmania
CSIRO have released preliminary results from the July 2013 SETFIA led stock survey of the Eastern Orange Roughy Zone. Two features known as St Patricks and St Helens in the Eastern Zone where roughy are known to aggregate to spawn were surveyed. St Helens Hill is typical of a roughy hill being a conical seamount […]
Plenty of fish in the sea. (Again).
Quotas for the Southern and Eastern Scalefish and Shark Fishery’s (SESSF) 2014/15 fishing year commencing on May 1 have been announced. Quotas increased between 2013/14 and 2014/15 by 816 tonnes or 4%. TACs are set through an exhaustive process that starts with CSIRO completing stock assessments on each stock. These assessments the pass through the […]
Blue warehou catches kept to lowest ever
Blue warehou has been classified as overfished since 2009 following peak catches of almost 3,000 tonnes in 1991. The landed catch fell substantially as a result of a series of quota reductions since 2006. In 2009/10 SETFIA ran its first Skipper training course and communicated to Skippers the need to avoid blue warehou and to […]
Sustainability status of five South East Trawl stocks improves
Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Agriculture, Senator Richard Colbeck, today released the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) Fishery Status Reports 2012. The report assesses the status of all 93 Commonwealth fish stocks. Senator Colbeck said, “What this report shows us is that our fisheries are undeniably sustainable and our […]