Southern Bluefin: Best Start Of Season In Decadesff

Source: ABC

Tuna fishers say they have had the best start to a season in decades.

The first load of tuna has been towed into Port Lincoln and weighs 500 tons. This is part of the 4,500 tons quota.

Brian Jeffriess from the Australian Tuna Association says it is a surprisingly big catch for so early in the season.

“There’s hugely more fish there than people thought there were and certainly than there were in the late 90s. The stock has recovered very, very fast and even as a fishing industry person it’s surprised us,” he said.

“Catching this much fish this early also reduces the risks of not being able to catch them through bad weather later on so for many reasons it’s a good sign,” he said.

Tuna fishermen in South Australia are trying to catch more of their quota earlier in the season partly to avoid seismic testing being conducted in their fishery.

BP are conducting a seismic survey in the western part of the Great Australian Bight in the path of Tuna which migrate from the Indian Ocean.

Brian Jeffries from the Australian Tuna Association says “No one knows what the effect of these large scale seismic surveys is on fish migration behavior.”

“So we are dealing with a big unknown here.”

“So what we attempted to do and we did successfully was catch fish which had already migrated into the Great Australian Bight before the seismic survey started.”