Autonomous saildrones out and about
Through the GipNet Environmental Monitoring Research Initiative, CSIRO are trialing the use of a saildrone, a type of Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) to collect a range of oceanic data in Bass Strait. The saildrones are controlled remotely through satellite communications and are powered by wind and solar. They are also equipped with navigation lights, radar […]
NSW Southern Trawl Fishery to join the South-East Trawl
The NSW and Australian Governments have been working on merging the NSW managed Southern Fish Trawl and the Commonwealth managed South East Trawl fisheries. The NSW trawl fishery operates inside 3 nautical miles and the Commonwealth trawl fishery between 3 and 200 nautical miles. The push for the merger has come because the two fisheries […]
ABARES report South-East trawler profitability up
Latest financial and economic survey results from operators in the Commonwealth Trawl Sector (South East Trawl) shows that the profitability of vessels operating in the fishery improved in 2014-15. Generating a gross value of fishery production of almost $43 million in 2015-16, the South East Trawl is the major supplier of locally caught finfish to Melbourne […]
Alec throws back $100,000 giant squid…
Alec Harvey, skipper of the Empress Pearl could not believe his eyes when his vessel recently caught this enormous squid. It is the biggest he has ever seen. It was caught in 380m of water off the west coast of Tasmania. It was estimated at 2.5-3 metres long and weighing 80-100kgs. Based mostly on its […]
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 […]
Global Fishing Watch; interesting but of limited value in Australia
Global Fishing Watch (GFW) is an online tool with which users can view the tracks of some of the world’s fishing fleets. The system uses ‘AIS’ data to do this. AIS stands for “automatic identification system”. It is an important safety tool used to avoid collisions between ships at sea. Essentially a tracking system it allows […]
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 […]
Offshore Fish Farming – Solution or Sci-Fi?
In January 2018 around 20,000 yellowtail kingfish escaped from the damaged sea pens of an offshore aquaculture research lease in Providence Bay, off Port Stephens, New South Wales. The sea pen was part of a Marine Finfish Aquaculture Research Lease; a collaboration between Huon Aquaculture and the NSW Department of Primary Industries (DPI). The projects aimed […]
Eastern Orange Roughy 2016 Survey and Biomass Report
CSIRO have released the report on the biomass of orange roughy in the eastern zone. Read the executive summary and download the full report below. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Based on the 2016 acoustic surveys the biomass of spawning orange roughy on the grounds at 38 kHz and 120 kHz ranges from 24 000 (CV 0.12) […]
What has happened to fisheries co-management in Victoria?
By Ross Winstanley* Since 1995, Victoria has see-sawed between structured co-management and “fit-for-purpose” arrangements, depending on the government of the day. Coalition governments have twice introduced broad-based statutory co-management councils while Labor governments have twice turned to less-structured arrangements. From the 1960s, Victoria was at the forefront of sharing responsibilities between government and the commerc