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“FISH
STOCKS IN DANGER, RECREATIONAL FISHING SUFFERING”
Would a
headline like that raise an eyebrow in August 1999? Recreational anglers would be saying tell us something we don’t know.
You know, I know, how about we band together and tell everyone who doesn’t know
or want to know.
We now have 3 years of solid
data behind us and the figures aren’t getting any better. Our elected managers
and I stress ‘elected’ continue to impose bag limits on us, no take zones,
marine parks etc and as sportfishers we accept these with out to much of a
struggle, but what sort of limitations are placed on our commercial comrades.
Only the other day I saw
once again the ‘commercial’ netters set up their nets just outside a marine
reserve and drag the crap out of it. Everything leaving or entering the marine
reserve runs the gauntlet day after day. The local fish market was selling
‘baby John Dory fillets’ the size of my finger, not even 3 inches long. Every
day for months the prawn trawlers trawl Botany Bay for prawns. The figures
bandied around were 60kg bycatch for every kilo of prawns, sure we are starting
to see fish friendly nets, but is 30kg bycatch any better? How many times have
you heard the tired old reply from fisheries managers saying Joe Public has a
right to eat seafood. The public has an insatiable taste for seafood, so do we
put more nets out, lengthier longlines, endorse more commercial fisherman, I
don’t think so. By constantly limiting the recreational fisher are more fish
being put through the co-op? I don’t think so. Size limits for snapper and
flathead are on the drawing board for an increase, will this stop those tiny
flathead fillets in the local fish shop.
United we are 5,000,000
anglers Australia wide, injecting some $3.5 billion dollars annually. Let’s
start making some noise and flexing our political muscle. Talks to your fellow
anglers at the boat ramp, in the tackle shop, don’t ignore them. Education is
the key. Become informed on all aspects of the Austag Annual Report and get on
your soapbox and preach, because fisheries managers and politicians see us as
soft targets and we have been losing for the last 100 years.
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Figure ??: Hours of fishing required to catch a fish by ANSA
NSW fishers
Now that is off my chest the
following figures will reinforce what many of us already know, fish are getting
harder to catch. From the graph below you will see that it took us an average
of 4.8 hours to catch a quality keeper this year, up from 4.4 hours in 97/98
and 3.2 hours in 96/97.
Seems excessive? Just ask
the guy who stalks that elusive 10lb trout, trolls for his first marlin, cubes
for yellowfin or sits at anchor for a 15lb snapper.
We are finding more and more
commercial fishers in the last year scratching for a living, and only yesterday
I was talking to a south coast resident that enlightened me on the latest
tactic employed by these unscrupulous operators. It involves running a gill net
across the face of ocean rock platforms and then hooning inside the net and
between the rocks to scare the fish out. Do our figures reflect these actions,
surely they have some bearing on the situation. It took us 1.2 hours to catch a
fish of any size last year, as opposed to 0.7 hours in 97/98 and 96/97. Figure
??? shows the time taken to catch a keeper or a fish of any size.
Our
percentage of fish kept ratio has remained static at about an average of 18.5%
over the last 3 years, this year we took home 19% of our catch, in 96/97 we
kept 21% and in 97/98 only 16%.
Figure ??: Comparison of percentages of the catch kept by ANSA NSW members
Where are the fish going? In
the last report I mentioned that 51% of all snapper captured by the trawlers in
NSW are discarded, they averaged 17cm and they most likely died. At what cost
do we keep feeding Joe Public, till we loose all our rights as recreational
fishers and our fisheries are decimated. Talk to an old timer from your club
and ask him about the good old days, and once you pick your jaw up off the
floor you will realise that this was only 30 years ago. Has recreational
angling had such a dramatic impact? All I’m saying is if we are constantly
being limited and shut out, who make the rules across the board.
On all the data sheets that
are returned I am amazed to see how many fishless trips anglers have, and on
average 1 trip in 4 is fishless. Are we as anglers really that bad? Or is the
writing on the wall so to speak.
I am finally glad to see NSW
involved with Austag with our Catch and Release program being incorporated into
the Austag brief and we are hoping to establish sportfish tagging programs in
NSW in the near future. Sure we have the opportunity to access the Game Fish
Tagging program but not all our anglers live near the coast. Hopefully next
year’s report will include our first sportfish tagging data.
Stan Konstantaras
NSW Tagging Officer