The South Australian calamary resource is shared by three sectors. Juveniles and sub-adults are incidentally caught by commercial prawn trawlers, while adults are targeted by commercial Marine Scalefish licence holders and recreational fishers on inshore spawning grounds. The trawlers are permitted to retain and sell calamary as ‘by-product’, however, historically, there has been no legislative requirement for this catch to be reported. As such the assessment of South Australia’s calamary fishery is currently limited to the analysis of commercial catch and effort data collected from the Marine Scalefish Fishery.

In December 2005 the South Australian prawn fisheries implemented mandatory reporting of all retained by-product. This was in response to recommendations made by the Commonwealth Department of Environment and Heritage to assess and monitor all by-catch species in compliance with the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation (EPBC) Act. This reporting method, however, is under-representative of total calamary catch as fishers generally discard small animals and those in poor condition. Through structured fishery-independent surveys this study obtained spatial and temporal estimates of calamary by-catch within the prawn fishery, compares estimates with reported catches and discusses the feasibility of using on-going by-catch monitoring as a potential performance indicator in the Marine Scalefish Fishery.