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Commonwealth Trawl SectorHistoryEarly management of the Commonwealth Trawl Sector (previously known as the South East Trawl Fishery)One of Australia's oldest commercial fisheries, trawl fishing began in 1915 when the New South Wales Government imported three steam trawlers from England, to be based in Sydney. Between 1915 and 1950, the Fishery was dominated by steam trawlers operating on the continental shelf in waters off New South Wales, fishing mainly for flathead and then jackass morwong and redfish. The early 1950s saw the use of Danish Seine vessels by many operators. However since 1970 otter board trawling has become the main fishing method, with the fishery expanding southwards and outwards to waters deeper than 200 metres (100 fathoms). Before the 1970's, management was mostly open access with separate state regulations (eg mesh sizes and fish minimum size limits). From 1976 onwards, gemfish became one of the main targeted species. The late 1970s saw the fishery expand further into waters off western Victoria and around Tasmania. However, until the discovery of orange roughy in the early 1980s, the majority of landings still came from waters off NSW and in eastern Bass Strait. The 80's also saw the management of the fishery brought under Commonwealth jurisdiction. Regulation of the fishery after the mid-1980sCommonwealth regulation of the trawl fishery before the mid 1980s largely mirrored State government restrictions on gear and fish minimum size limits. In June 1985, in response to a marked increase in boat numbers, the Commonwealth closed the Fishery to new entrants. Around the same time it implemented management arrangements which
Previous regulations controlling maximum boat length and minimum mesh size remained in place. A mandatory catch and effort logbook system was introduced to the Fishery in October 1985 and, in 1986, the Commonwealth moved to limit the capacity of vessels through a unitisation scheme. In response to suggestions that the winter eastern gemfish fishery stock was over-exploited, a competitive Total Allowable Catch (TAC) of 3000 tonnes was introduced for gemfish in 1988 with the first individual transferable quotas (ITQs) applied in 1989. Meanwhile, the volume of orange roughy being landed from the South West Sector continued to rise until 1990, at which time it comprised 75 per cent of the recorded catch from the Fishery. The Australian Fisheries Service (AFS) was replaced by AFMA in 1991 to implement the new Fisheries Management Act 1991. It was against this background that a general move was made in 1991 to introduce ITQs across the Fishery. ITQs for 16 species/species groups come into force on 1 January 1992. Following the introduction of school and gummy shark into the quota management system in 2001, and the introduction of sawshark and elephant fish at the commencement of 2002, there are now 30 species/species groups under quota management. Iincidental catch allowances also apply for a number of non-quota species (eg Endevour dogfish). Page last updated 13 July, 2005 |
