Worries Over 9500 M/T Super Trawler Effect On Bluefin Stocksff

Source: ABC Adelaide

It’s the largest fishing vessel that would ever work in Australian fisheries, said to have been part of destroying West African fisheries, and feared to be coming to Australia to destroy our fisheries. Recreational fishing groups and environmental groups that are usually at odds over Australia’s new marine parks are allied in opposition to the super trawler. Meanwhile, the government and the Australian Fisheries Management Authority say that the fisheries will be rigorously protected.

Tasmanian fishing company Seafish Tasmania in a joint venture with the trawler’s Dutch owners is planning to base the super trawler in Devonport and fish for jack mackerel and redbait.

After being delayed by Greenpeace protests the Margiris is reported to have left The Netherlands on route to Australia.

The massive 9500 ton, 142 meter trawler, currently registered in Lithuania, is twice the size of the largest trawler to have ever fished in Australian waters.

Greenpeace has previously confronted the Margaris off the West African coast where they have been pursuing a campaign against European super trawlers, in Greenpeace’s views, plundering West African fisheries.

The Greenpeace actions are in the context of a review of European fisheries policies with Greenpeace arguing the European fleet is too large and desperately needing new fishing grounds having depleted fish stocks in European waters, and now West African waters as well.

Ironically fish caught by Margiris as proposed in Australian fisheries will be exported to West Africa.

The Margiris is sailing to Australia, however before it can fish in Australian waters it must be registered with the Australian Maritime Safety Authority as an Australian boat.

It is understood that the trawler will then fish in the Commonwealth Small Pelagic Fishery which extends from south eastern Queensland southwards to Tasmania and west along the South Australian coast and around to the south west of Western Australia.

Gerry Geen from Seafish Tasmania says they are looking to catch a quota of 18,000 tons of jack mackerel and redbait, which he says is 5% of the fish stock in that fishery.

The fishery is managed by the Australian Fisheries Management Authority.

Dr Mike Kelly, Member for Eden-Monaro and former Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry says that Australia has world’s best practise sustainable fishery management and that the community ‘should be very confident how this vessel would be managed under our regulatory regime’.

Seafish Tasmania has been quoted in industry web sites as referring to the Australian regulations as cause for reassurance, saying that Australia is ‘the best place for a boat like this to be.’

The Tasmanian Conservation Trust says that ‘the fish the Margiris will target are a vital food source for important species like the critically endangered southern bluefin tuna, seabirds, marine mammals and game fish’.

“Trawlers of this type have a horrendous record of by-catch and the ship itself represents a direct threat to marine mammals like dolphins and seals.”

Opposition to the super trawler points to the potential of its quota being concentrated in small areas of the available fishery.

Andrew Wilkie, Independent MP for the Tasmanian seat of Denison, says that ‘the approved quota is not broken down into smaller limits for specific areas, which means the trawler could plunder our richest fisheries’.

The Australian Recreational Fishing Foundation is concerned that the Margiris, the second largest super trawler of its type in the world, will challenge Australia’s sustainable fishery management system.

ARFF spokesperson, Allan Hansard, says ‘at an aggregate level the science tells us that the Margiris is likely to have minimal impact on total fish stocks’.

“However, we are concerned about the potential of localised depletion of fish stocks and the resulting economic and social effects on local coastal communities. The science seems to be anything but definitive on this issue.”

“If the Margiris positions itself off Coffs Harbor, Bermagui, Portland or St Helens and extracts large quantities of bait fish, what will be the environmental, economic and social impacts?”

“What guarantees will we have that the marine food chain will not be affected?”

“What will be the effects on the local communities that rely on recreational fishing?”

Nathaniel Pelle, Greenpeace Oceans Campaigner says ‘vessels like the FV Margiris and its bloated fleet of heavily subsidized European trawlers have fished their own waters to near collapse and they’ve brought fisheries to their knees everywhere they’ve been since’.

Greenpeace points out that the Margiris ‘is linked to the European Pelagic Freezer-Trawler Association (PFA), an EU taxpayer-subsidized fleet with a history of leaving collapsed fisheries and out-of-work fishermen in its wake’.

“The South Pacific jack mackerel fishery, a favorite of the Margiris and the PFA, made headlines this year when fish populations plummeted by ninety percent.”

“Off West Africa almost all the PFA’s target species are now fully exploited or overexploited, prompting the Senegalese government to expel all PFA vessels from their waters.”