Trawler operators in the Gulf of Carpentaria believe they’re on track to achieving an ambitious target of cutting bycatch by 30 per cent in three years.
The northern prawn fishery’s been offering cash incentives to promote and develop new ideas for limiting the amount of non-target species caught in prawn nets.
Trawler skipper Jamie Ball admitted he was worried at first about potential prawn losses when trialling a new bycatch reduction device on board his fishing vessel, Xanadu.
But after measuring and comparing catches in separate nets over a two-week period, the skipper and his crew were convinced the industry was on a winner.
“I was a bit hesitant ’cause I thought ‘oh well is it losing prawn as well?”
“So, we weighed everything, every bag, for every shot for I think 25 or 30 shots. Sometimes it was up, sometimes it was down but it averaged out at 40 per cent bycatch reduction and I think it was approximately two per cent of prawn,” he said.
Those figures have excited Northern Prawn Fishery (NPF) industry officer Adrianne Laird, who said the preliminary result would now be scientifically verified using the data collected at sea in the next four months during the tiger prawn season.
She said the new device, named ‘Con’s fish eye’ after its Brisbane net maker designer, was a frontrunner to win up to $20,000 cash, but the industry was still hunting for new ideas to help reach its goal of reducing bycatch by one third.
“It’s a simple device, it’s a fish eye that’s been modified and we ended up with 41 per cent bycatch reduction which is massive,” Ms Laird said.
“I mean you can’t get a better endorsement than a skipper not wanting to give them back at the end of the trial.”
“The crew really loved it as well because it was easy to use and it reduced the processing time because they didn’t have the fish there to deal with when they’re trying to get the prawns out of the catch.”
As Jamie Ball and his crew head back to the Gulf of Carpentaria, they are confident of replicating the result in the tiger prawn season, which starts on August 1.
“No skipper likes change. If they know something works, it works so they don’t like to change, we’re all the same,” he said.
“But I trialled it in June and it worked well, so I’m willing to give it a go again in all of my nets.”
Apart from the obvious benefits of reducing bycatch, the importance of being an environmentally sustainable fishery was not lost on the young skipper, who has worked in the Gulf fishery for 16 years.
“I was one of the first to trial the new TED, turtle excluder device, in 2000 before it became compulsory in 2001. I don’t think (the company) liked it then but now, I wouldn’t be without it.
“You don’t catch turtles, you don’t catch sharks or any bigger stuff because of the bar work in there to get rid of the bigger stuff and keep the smaller stuff.”
Mr Ball said it was only a matter of time before Con’s fish eye was approved and widely adopted across the northern prawn fishery in the same way as TEDs and other bycatch reduction devices (BRDs).
“It’s going to make life easier for us. If we can reduce bycatch, well, we don’t have as many people trying to stop our fishery, make it harder for us to fish.”
“We don’t go out there to destroy reefs.
“We go out there for our livelihood and to make a living.”
TIMES THEY ARE A-CHANGING IN THE NORTHERN PRAWN FISHERY
As NPF industry officer, Ms Laird spent the past week in the ports of Cairns, Darwin and Cairns ahead of the tiger prawn season, conducting workshops for Crew Member Observers, a long-term scientific monitoring project to help the CSIRO.
Last year, the volunteer program achieved its biggest participation and coverage of any previous season in the NPF with 11 CMOs recording species from 3560 shots.
“Attitudes are changing so much,” she said.
“Obviously the people who put their hand up to be crew member observers have a passion for that sort of thing.
“But then, from conversations I hear outside of the program, I brief the skippers before they head out to sea each season … you hear how they’ll cut their nets to get a saw fish out rather than disposing of the animal, and just generally a lot of change in the way the industry talk about that.”
– By Charlie McKillop, ABC Rural