The Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) has found that SPF mid-water trawlers pose a low risk to deep water species such as orange roughy and gulper sharks and has decided that many of the current closures are not required to protect these species during SPF trawler operations.<\/p>\n
The move follows calls from recreational and commercial fishers to review the closures.<\/p>\n
AFMA\u2019s CEO, Dr James Findlay said the removal of some closures in the SPF meant that mid-water trawlers, such as the Geelong Star, can now catch their fishing quota in a substantially greater area.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the start of the next season, an additional offshore area more than 16 times the size of Tasmania will be available for mid-water trawlers in the SPF,\u201d Dr Findlay said.<\/p>\n
\u201cAFMA makes decisions based on the best available science and risk assessments. Assessments show that bottom dwelling species in deep water areas are at low risk from SPF mid-water trawlers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith the changes, there will be more areas away from the coast for SPF operators to fish in.\u201d<\/p>\n
The total allowable catch limits for the SPF and operators are not affected by this decision and all catches will continue to be closely monitored.<\/p>\n
Closures will remain in place to protect deep water species during bottom trawling operations in other fisheries.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
More than one million square kilometres of additional offshore waters near southern and eastern Australia will open to mid-water trawling in the Small Pelagic Fishery (SPF) from 1 May.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"sponsor":[],"class_list":["post-9847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-industry-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9847\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9847"},{"taxonomy":"sponsor","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.worldfishing.net\/icefish-conference\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/sponsor?post=9847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}