Australia: reconstructing estimates of total fisheries removals 1950-2010

• Main Authors: Kleisner, K, Brennan, C, Garland, A, Lingard, S, Tracey, S, Sahlqvist, P, Tsolos, A, Pauly, D, Zeller, D
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Fisheries Centre, University of British Columbia 2015
• Subjects: Agricultural and Veterinary Sciences; Fisheries Sciences; Aquatic Ecosystem Studies and Stock Assessment; Macquarie Island
• Online Access: http://ecite.utas.edu.au/104829

Australias commercial fisheries are of significant value to the Australian economy, with the twenty Commonwealthfisheries alone worth around AUD$320 million in production value. The fisheries statistics reported by the Australiangovernment to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) typically consist of commerciallandings from the national Commonwealth fisheries and the state fisheries. While reporting from this sector isgenerally robust in terms of accuracy and taxonomic precision, these statistics do not include landings from therecreational or indigenous fisheries. Recreational fishing is a popular pastime for Australians with the most recentNational Recreational and Indigenous Fishing Survey (NRIFS) estimating a national participation rate of 19.5% in2000. Within the coastal areas of Northern Australia, the indigenous communities comprise a significant proportionof the total population. Within these Northern states, a high participation rate in fishing activities was recorded bythe NRIFS. Similarly, the indigenous communities of the Torres Strait Islands land a significant quantity of catch.Discards from state and Commonwealth commercial fisheries, which may in some cases be alive, are often in poorcondition. Although Australia has relatively strong monitoring of discards and in some cases estimates discardrates, discards are not reported to the FAO. This is due to the fact that FAO data are presented as productionfigures, i.e., landings. However, given the global trend towards ecosystem-based fisheries considerations, totalcatches (i.e., total removals) should be considered for reporting. This study reconstructs total marine fisheriesremovals from 1950 to 2010 for the Commonwealth and for each of the state fisheries as well as the territorialislands (Norfolk Island and Heard andMacDonald Islands) and the state islands(Lord Howe Island, Macquarie Island,and the Torres Strait Islands). We findthat reported commercial landings matchquite closely to the finer scale landingsdata provided to us by the Commonwealthand the state fisheries departments.However, when we consider total landingsfrom all sectors plus discards, we find thatthe total removals are 15 million tonnes,which is nearly double the 8.1 milliontonnes reported from the commercialsector to the FAO from 1950 to 2010. Themost significant source of this differencecomes from discards, which wereestimated to be 4 million tonnes over thisperiod, with an unestimated fraction thatpossibly survives after being caught. Totalestimated indigenous and recreationalcatches amount to 2.3 million tonnes (16%of total catches) over this period. Overall,we highlight the need to estimate landingsand discards from all fisheries sectors tobetter quantify total removals from thesystem to more accurately establish themultiple pressures on marine ecosystems,and thus manage fish sustainably.