Fisheries environmental assessments – world’s best practice

Simone Retif and Celeste Shootingstar

Sustainable Fisheries Section, Marine Branch, Environment Australia
Email: Simone.retif@ea.gov.au

The Australian Oceans Policy, released in 1998, announced the Australian Government’s intention to require environmental assessment of Commonwealth managed fisheries and to remove the general exemption for fisheries from the export permit requirements of environmental legislation. The purpose is to independently audit the environmental performance of Australian fisheries to ensure that, as far as possible, they are managed in an ecologically sustainable way.

This objective means that decision-makers must ensure that the impacts of fishing are sustainable, ensuring that the impacts of fishing activities on target, bycatch, byproduct and protected species and the wider marine environment are all sustainable. Achievement of a balanced triple bottom line depends on an integrated, comprehensive assessment of impacts and not an exclusive focus on target stocks.

This paper provides an overview of Commonwealth environmental assessment requirements and a brief analysis of progress with the assessments. It also reflects on the ways in which these requirements can be integrated with fishery management activities.