The commercial fish trawling industry off the coast of south east Australia have welcomed a move that will mean they don’t have to throw their pink ling catch overboard.
Last year a controversial limit on how much ling could be brought to shore caused outrage in the trawling industry in the south east of the country.
Fishermen say that the method for measuring stocks still doesn’t add up because their seeing more and more ling in the water.
The Australian Fisheries Management Authority decreased the quota of pink ling to 250 tonnes for last season with a daily trip limit of 50 kilograms a day imposed late last year.
Australian Fisheries Management Authority has proposed to remove the trip limit and increase the total allowable catch to 350 tonnes so that the ling can be brought in and sold.
The CEO of the South East Trawl Fisherman Industry Association, Simon Boag, has cautiously welcomed the move.
“We’re frustrated by what’s happened this year, a very low eastern TAC on ling and a per trip limit, which we haven’t seen before, but we are pleased with AFMA’s recommendation to the commission for 350 tonnes…we won’t be able to target ling, but we can certainly go about our business next year and take incidental catch of ling that will be covered by quota,” Mr Boag said.
The Australian Fisheries Management Authority decreased the quota of pink ling to 250 tonnes for last season with a daily trip limit of 50 kilograms a day imposed late last year.
This came after an assessment of pink ling in the eastern zone, which runs from south of Sydney down the middle of the east coast of Tasmania, were below target levels.
Fishers in the industry were furious because it led to tonnes of the fish being thrown overboard as a bi-catch while filling their quotas for other species like blue grenadier that swims at the same depth.
The SETFIA CEO, who is based at East Gippsland in Lakes Entrance, says that the low stock assessments and restrictions on bringing in ling have been hard to swallow because catch rates of the species have been going up.
“We’re getting strange signals from the stock assessment…which is saying that eastern ling catches need to go down, so the stock can rebuild but our catch rates are going up, so we’re catching more and more and more ling,”
“We’d like to see a stock assessment that was really happening on the water,” Mr Boag said.
But AFMA fisheries officer George Day says that while the catch rates for individual boats might be going up this doesn’t necessarily mean that the stocks of ling are going up.
“We appreciate the concerns of fishers and sometimes what they see on the water is different to what the stock assessment produces, which takes into account a lot of different information above and beyond catch rates,” Mr Day said.
The AFMA commission will make a ruling on the ling quotas next month.
2013 ABC