Bycatch Management In Australia’s Northern Prawn Fishery

David Brewer

CSIRO Marine Research PO Box 120 Cleveland, QLD 4163, Australia
Email: David.Brewer@csiro.au

In the past decade, management of non-target species in Australian fisheries has evolved substantially. Prawn trawl fisheries have been a particular concern due to the non-selective nature of the method and the size of the fisheries. The Northern Prawn Fishery (NPF) spans the breadth of northern Australia (about 6,000 km of coastline), takes about 8,500 tonnes of prawns annually and catches 5 and 10 times that amount in unwanted bycatch.

The NPF and other fisheries have recently come under pressure from legislation, new bycatch policies, external market forces and public perception to reduce their impact on bycatch populations. There is now a requirement to demonstrate negligible impacts on protected species, minimise impacts on non-target species, and demonstrate that all species are impacted at sustainable levels. In the NPF this is being achieved through new management initiatives and a staged research and development program. Management arrangements include the introduction of Turtle Excluder Devices (TEDs) and Bycatch Reduction Devices (BRDs) in 2000; a ban on shark finning in 2001; log book recording for protected species; effort reductions (e.g. 46% of boat days since 1990); spatial, seasonal and daytime closures; and the introduction of a bycatch monitoring program. This paper also describes the results from a project to measure the performance of TEDs and BRDs in the NPF, and outlines the approach being taken to demonstrate sustainability for the diverse range of species impacted by this fishery.

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