The Southern Remote Zone - South Tasman Rise Sector

The South Tasman Rise Sector (STR) is a limited entry ‘international’ fishery managed with New Zealand under a memorandum of understanding.

A competitive Total Allowable Catch (TAC) applies for orange roughy. Since 2003, a single set of management arrangements have applied to the entire area of the STR geographical feature, including that part of the rise which lies within the area of the Southern Remote Zone of the Southern and Eastern Scalefish and Shark Fishery.

The remainder of the Southern Remote Zone, excluding the Cascade Plateau region, operates under a 500t orange roughy TAC trigger. All orange roughy taken within the entire STR feature, both inside and outside the Australian Fishing Zone (AFZ), is deducted from Australia’s orange roughy TAC, which is split 75:25 between Australia and New Zealand. The fishery year runs from 1 March 2004 to 28 February 2005.

During 2003, negotiations between government and industry representatives from both Australia and New Zealand, resulted in the development and implementation of a four-year harvest strategy ( PDF 14kb) , from 2003 to 2007.

The 2004 to 2005 TAC was reduced to 600 tonnes (450t apportioned to Australia). The harvest strategy includes additional TAC reductions of 200 t each year if catches do not reach the TAC for that year plus one hundred tonnes. However if catches do reach this target, the TAC will remain unchanged for the following year. Thus if less than 700t is caught in 2004-05 the TAC for 2005-06 will be reduced to 400t, conversely, if 700t is caught the TAC will remain at 600t. In 2004 the performance measure to increase the TAC was not reached and therefore the TAC for 2005-06 will be 400t.

A ‘trigger-up mechanism’ allows an operator to target large migratory aggregations of orange roughy in the event that they aggregate on the STR. That is, an additional 500t will be made available to operators if the average catch rate for the fishery reaches two tonnes per tow; and the combined total catch during a season reaches 75% of the original TAC for the season. The additional 500 t is available only for that season, and does not apply to the year 2006 if continued inability to meet the TAC in preceding years has resulted in reduction of the TAC to 200 tonnes.

Allocation rights in the STR Fishery

The Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) Board has agreed, that should AFMA decide to allocate access rights through individual quotas at a later date and should catch history form part or all of the allocation formula, the cut-off date for catch history will be 31 December 2001.

The South Tasman Rise Sector at a glance.

Page last updated 26 September, 2007