Snapper Wild Stocking......... it's viable

[Ronje1]

Nope. I'm saying that they don't advance our fisheries because of personalities.

DAF has a cultural view that THEY own the fisheries of Qld and that THEY will dole it out. Been that way since the 70s.

They are obstructionist and have policies (very few of them available for public access or interest) designed to be in the interest of Fisheries and NOT Joe public. Its a self-serving organisation.

They have a bunch of scientists on the payroll whose salaries they can't afford and rely on grant money from places like the Fisheries Research Development Corporation (FRDC) for all sorts of unnecessary projects to pay them.

The Director - General also has a scientific background.

The projects they put up are normally claimed to be for "policy development" but then sit on shelves undeveloped for years with no policy coming from it.

Fishstocking is a good example.

The work DAF does for the Sydney Fish Market on FRDC grant money is a case in point (live mud crab industry and export).

Happy to lay out what they've been up to but this might not be the place and time. Its fact based and is an eye-opener.

Start a thread up if u like.

[ranmar850]

I've just come upon this thread, and would like to offer some Western Australian background on this.
Firstly, for those of you who haven't caught up with me on the Boating sub-forum, where I normally hide, I have an extensive background in commercial fishing. I've left it now, but skippered crayboats for 26 consecutive years, and did a fair bit of wetfish ( scale fish, mostly demersal) . I had a lot of involvement with the research side of things, both actively in the field, and sitting on various government committees as a fisherman representative, including a Research sub-committee of the Rock Lobster Industry Advisory Council.
Firstly, on general principles, you need to raise your size limits. On pretty well everything. They started over here with Tailor , raising the size limit to 300mm, and a bag limit of 8., back in 2003. Still a tiny fish, but it had the immediate effect of stopping people fishing the hell out of them in the estuaries. Oh, the wailing and lamentations. " We'll never have a feed of tailor again" Within 2 years, it was obvious it was a success, the average size of the fish off the beaches shot up. Now, plenty of tailor for everyone.
Snapper were originally 35cm. it was raised to a mix of 40 and 50 cm , depending on where you were. Overall the ocean fishery improved., and quite quickly. But snapper is WA a a genetically diverse bunch, actually often restricted to small areas, with little or no population mixing, it is believed. So, prone to overfishing when they aggregated for spawning, the old story all over the world. The Snapper Guardians thing originally mentioned is for the Cockburn/Warnboro sounds stock, which spawns there, but spreads down from Mandurah all the way up to Lancelin out of season.
Shark Bay probably has the largest snapper stocks in Australia, but with 3 separate breeding stocks. Eastern and Western Gulf fish spend their whole lives in those areas, and get very big. They were being badly overfished, they had to bring in closed seasons, an Upper Size Limit as well , and limit you to 1 fish per day(with a fixed catch, ballot system for tags, no tag, no fish) for some years to bring them back--they are now recovering. You'd been dumbstruck at the ease of catching snapper up to just under 50cm ( legal size) in shallow water in the middle of the day. Bring the bream gear, have a ball. Then get blown away when a big one turns up unexpectedly You are allowed 2 fish now, but the breeding season is still closed, and there in no upper size limit.
The third stock in the bay is the ocean fish. They come all the way from at least off the Abrolhos Islands( off Geraldton) to form vast spawning aggregations in the waters off Carnarvon. These have been mercilessly hammered ( under an over-generous quota system) for many, many years. Quotas have been dropped, catches have kept dropping, and the ocean fishery has rapidly declined. This is undoubtedly the worst example of Fisheries mis-management In WA history. And they still really don't seem to get it, only just this year closing off the area of one of the main spawning aggregations . One of three areas, but I guess it's a start.

So you have a booming amateur/charter snapper fishery around Perth, due to the management of the spawning season, and a pretty ordinary. one up our way, because we rely on the oceanic stock just mentioned.

Do your Fisheries know if you have one stock, or several? Your only likely way out of it is upping the minimum size, and imposing much tighter bag limits. Or you might end up like South Australia, which once had an amazing fishery , and now has a total closure. Your expectations on size had really shrunk over the years--I'm originally a Sydney boy, spent a lot of time fishing the harbour off the ferry wharves, and it was full of 20-25cm fish. Can any of the old boys here remember the old name classifications for snapper?
Cockney bream--up to about 150mm
Red Bream -over 150mm, up to around 5 lb.
Squire--5lb to 10lb
Snapper--over 10lb.
Yes, thats right, that's what you had. None of these 35cm "squire" I see referenced over there nowadays. If you can, find a copy of TC Roughleys' "Fish and Fisheries of Australia". it was a reference bible back in the day--read it and weep , for what you had. And don't blame "the Pros" for it all-we have all been complicit in this, the grinning blokes lifting a Fourex in front of a pile of fish you couldn't climb over, when you just couldn't stop your self because they were biting so well. And the decline was well down the road before the explosion of boat numbers, too.

[ranmar850]

Photos didn't load first time.




Shark Bay zones



Perth spawning area.

This will give you an idea of what we are looking at, and how the Snapper Guardians thing has worked. Completely lock out the Cockburn Sound area during spawning season--you can't even catch a snapper outside the area and bring it back through it to land---do you have areas they congregate like that to spawn, or is it just generally spread out? Much easier to manage if you can lock out an area, as they did in Cockburn, and the Eastern/Western Gulfs in Shark Bay.

[Lovey80]

I think MLS increases is the way to go. Get rid of the boat and upper size limit and implement a catch card system for Snapper and Pearlies. Enforce it hard and advertise it wide. Get some reliable data on the yearly take state wide for all sectors. Say 3 years of full data. Currently FQ have no idea as shown by the previous RRFF review a number of years back.

Then up the MLS to 45cm and leave it there for a decade and watch the data over that period. At the end of that period we should have a good understanding of stock numbers if FQ don’t go off using models to suit their expected outcomes like they did last time.

The catch card system could be easily automated into an app. Use a specific brag mat that has your own specific QR code on the mat. Each time you catch a legal snapper or pearlie that you intend to keep you pull the phone out, open the app, click snapper or Pearl perch, put the snapper on your brag mat with the QR code showing and take a picture. The date, time, tide, gps location, size etc can all be instantly taken and automatically uploaded to the FQ servers or as soon as it gets back in reception of 3G/4G.

[Ronje1]

And how was the problem sorted out?

It was managed properly.

Inclination to manage in the best interests of the public is foreign to Qld Fisheries.

Fishstocking is flavour of the day here so lets have a look at the you-beaut draft fishstocking policy in Qld.

[chris69]

And how was the problem sorted out?

It was managed properly.

Inclination to manage in the best interests of the public is foreign to Qld Fisheries.

Fishstocking is flavour of the day here so lets have a look at the you-beaut draft fishstocking policy in Qld.

The bribie island dpi did stocking for the maroochydore council a long time ago the cost was high back then but to say they have not done things they have, go pay them a visit one day you can do that but they just might throw you out after awhile of listening to you telling them how to do things and what there not doing and what they should do.

[Ronje1]

Been there, Chris. It's in Deception Bay not Bribie Is.

The DPI research station there was simply a research station. It was managed by a DPI guy called Mike Dredge ex Bundaberg. Mike was a scientist not a fisheries manager. From memory it fell into disrepair and closed. There was talk of refurbishing it. Don't know if that happened.

Deception Bay research station staff undertook project work for organisations requesting it AFTER Brisbane DAF manages the project to death and organises payment. There's always payment involved.

Easy to get the two confused, eh Chris.

It wasn't (and still isn't) a managerial arm of the Dept Agriculture and Fisheries Qld. DAF for short.

Managing fisheries for Qlders is the job of the managerial wing of DAF. They're based in Brisbane.

AND that's where the cultural problem with Fisheries lies. In Brisbane head office. The decision making centre of Qld fisheries universe.

There's a fish stocking thread on the forum. Go over there and there's an invitation to chat. It hasn't had an entry since 2016 when the SIP scheme was changed.

[Lovey80]

Phill I’m not sure what the wild stocking would do over say decent MLS increases. I’d love to know the expected extra recruitment we’d get from a jump from 35 to 45cm. What is the growth time from 35-45cm? How many spawning cycles would we get in that time?. What would the expected morbidity of the larger protected group size be? Are areas like Moreton Bay where large amounts of spawning happens and a % of those fish move deeper, or is it just another area it happens as well as offshore?

Could other related programmes be beneficial? Like maybe those large parts of the really shallow inner Bay Area could be turned into areas full of little mangrove islands? Could those islands be built in such a way to greatly increase the number of oysters filtering bay water? Could snapper and other target fish bait species being stocked provide a cheaper means of encouraging natural recruitment? Bigger food biomass bigger larger food biomass etc etc??

Are these ideas worth exploring?

We all get why fisheries have switched their thinking from managing a sustainable fishery and ensuring no collapse of a species to looking at virgin biomass and new arbitrary figures as to what is “sustainable”. For years, their controls had outcomes and for years they told us their previous controls had benefits that ensured that the fishery was sustainable and not at threat of collapse. So to try to remain relevant and keep their jobs they steal another region of the worlds model on “sustainability” and realise this % of virgin biomass theory means a new set of goals to work towards that keeps them in jobs for the next 20 years.

Soon they’ll be wanting GPS trackers and live feed video cameras to monitor us all on the water 24/7. They’ll also tell us we have to pay for the equipment.

[chris69]

Been there, Chris. It's in Deception Bay not Bribie Is.

The DPI research station there was simply a research station. It was managed by a DPI guy called Mike Dredge ex Bundaberg. Mike was a scientist not a fisheries manager. From memory it fell into disrepair and closed. There was talk of refurbishing it. Don't know if that happened.

Deception Bay research station staff undertook project work for organisations requesting it AFTER Brisbane DAF manages the project to death and organises payment. There's always payment involved.

Easy to get the two confused, eh Chris.

It wasn't (and still isn't) a managerial arm of the Dept Agriculture and Fisheries Qld. DAF for short.

Managing fisheries for Qlders is the job of the managerial wing of DAF. They're based in Brisbane.

AND that's where the cultural problem with Fisheries lies. In Brisbane head office. The decision making centre of Qld fisheries universe.

There's a fish stocking thread on the forum. Go over there and there's an invitation to chat. It hasn't had an entry since 2016 when the SIP scheme was changed.

No theres one on Bribie too the Aquaculture center.

[gazza2006au]

I watched a prawn clip today it spoke about the trawlers and how they are sustaining the prawns without over harvesting they mentioned the trawlers are locked out of area untill someone measures the wild stock they allow suffient time for the prawns to bounce back before allowing the trawlers into certain locations seemed to work really well

[Noelm]

Gaz, that's what Marine Parks are supposed to do, kind of, rec anglers hate Marine Parks.

[Ronje1]

No theres one on Bribie too the Aquaculture center

You're right. Thanks for that.$9 million worth built in 2009. 60 (or more by now) staff. That's where a lot of the budget money has gone. Drunken sailor spending sprees.

Accounts for why the Deception Bay facility was allowed to run down. Looks like there are others spread around Qld as well.

Its called an Eco-research Centre.

I think boating patrol works out of there as well.

[Lovey80]

Gaz, that's what Marine Parks are supposed to do, kind of, rec anglers hate Marine Parks.

marine parks in QLD, we were told, were specifically for protecting habitat. There is zero justification of marine parks/green zones for stock management.

[gazza2006au]

Gaz, that's what Marine Parks are supposed to do, kind of, rec anglers hate Marine Parks.

Ah yeah i didnt see it like that bugger it did seem the areas are open to trawlers more frequently like on a rotating thing

With marine parks for fishing once they go in place they never get lifted sadly

[Lucky_Phill]

This just in:-

https://www.facebook.com/KeepAustral...tion&ref=notif


LP