30 January 2007
Australia Conservationists say the Australian Federal Government is not doing enough to reduce over-fishing.
The Bureau of Rural Science says 24 species are overfished in Australian waters, and they are not sure about the state of another 40.
The Government says its efforts to buy back fishing licenses and reduce catch sizes will improve the future of blue fin tuna, the orange roughy and the tiger flathead.
But Craig Bohm from the Marine Conservation Society says that is not enough.
“A lot of that buyback money will be directed at buying back latent or lazy licenses which are licenses that are not currently active anyway,†he said.
“The real effort needs to go into removing effort from the water and that does not just mean taking boats off the water, but controlling the size of the boats, reducing the area in which they are allowed to fish and keeping destructive fishing, like seabed trawling, away from vulnerable marine species.â€
