Joe Ludwig (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Hansard source

The answer to the senator’s question is as follows:

(1) The Small Pelagic Fishery season commences on 1 May and concludes on 30 April of the following year.

(2) A concession holder in the Small Pelagic Fishery is able to harvest quota allocated for a season at any time during the season. Given the seasonality of fishing for all target species in the Small Pelagic Fishery, with the exception of Australian sardine, the scenario of catching an entire quota allocation before the end of a fishing season and then immediately after the start of the next season is unlikely.

(3) No.

(4) The Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) has not undertaken an analysis of the taking of twice the total allowable catches of target species over a 12 month period or less in the Small Pelagic Fishery. The ability to combine quotas across two seasons is essentially a one-off event requiring the fisher to not fish at the start of one season, retaining a full quota until later in that season, to then fish for the full quota in the final months of one season and fish the subsequent annual quota early in the next season. This scenario could not be repeated in the lead up to the next season as the fisher would have no quota at all until that following season. The repeat of such a scenario would require a biennial pattern of fishing with no fishing in the intervening year. If this was to become a significant fishing practice then AFMA may need to consider the implications for the management plan of the small pelagic fishery. However, the current conservative quota settings for commercial species in the fishery minimises the implications of this unlikely scenario.

While research on taking twice the total allowable catch in the fishery over a 12 month period or less has not been undertaken the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) has used management strategy evaluations to test the long-term sustainability of stocks fished in the small pelagic fishery (Giannini et al. 2010). Sustainability of these stocks over a projected 30 year period has been tested under the current Tier 1, Tier 2 and Tier 3 harvest strategy approaches.

Results show that the current Tier 1 and Tier 2 harvest strategy approaches for these stocks are robust to the time of year over which catches are taken, given catches are set at a specified percentage of the most recent best estimate of biomass in each year. The settings for total allowable catches in subsequent seasons are revised to correct for changes in fishing mortality and biomass each season. Under these approaches, stock biomass is maintained near target levels over the long-term.

Similarly, under a Tier 3 approach, where a fixed catch is taken each year, the catch levels are set so low (500 t) that catches are unlikely to reduce biomass below target levels, even if the total allowable catches for two years (at 500 t each) are caught over a short period spanning two seasons. This is the direct intention of ensuring that catches allowed for under Tier 3 approaches are set at very low levels.