Otoliths are hard, calcium carbonate structures located directly behind the brain of bony fishes. Sometime also referred to as ‘ear stones’, they are used by fish for hearing and balance and help the fish know which way is up. Otoliths range in size from one-tenth of an inch to one inch long and are found […]

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 […]

The Melbourne tea tree bloom in the first week of November signals the start of snapper season – Victorian recreational anglers flood boat ramps seeking big reds. Snapper has been a small part of the South East Trawl (SET) Fishery’s catch for more than 100 years and some by-catch is an unavoidable part of the sector’s 10,000+ […]

In September the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) released the 22nd edition of the Fishery Status Reports. This report provides an independent evaluation of the biological and economic status of 94 fish stocks across 22 fisheries, including those managed both solely and jointly by the Australian Government. It also summarises […]

In June the newsletter ran a piece about the plight of Ocean Oils, a Melbourne based business selling squalene oil.  It had become almost impossible to sell any oil in Australia because of the influx of foreign oils that had somehow been able to obtain the ‘Made in Australia’ brand. The ACCC has recently ruled […]

The results of a survey of the spawning biomass of orange roughy off eastern Tasmania have just been released.   Under contract to SETFIA the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) surveyed St Patrick’s Head and St Helen’s Hill off eastern Tasmania in July 2016 where orange roughy aggregate to spawn. CSIRO use an […]

By Ross Winstanley* Victorian seafood consumers are paying the cost of a political winner-take-all approach to bay and inlet fish resource allocation.  Victoria’s major parties have abandoned commitments to consumers’ right to access local bay and inlet species through the commercial supply chain. In Australian inshore fisheries, defining fair shares among competing interests has challenged […]