SPF Stakeholder Forum

SPF Stakeholder Forum – 24 March 2015

SPF Stakeholder Forum

24 March 2015

Part 1 of 3

Mr Simon McGuinness

RM Consulting Group

My name's Simon McGuinness. I’m from a consulting business in Melbourne and I was asked by AFMA to help run today's process. My business works in environmental and agricultural consulting, primarily in Victoria and I don't have a background in fisheries at all, but I do a lot of work with people involved in issues around natural resource use and I'm used to dealing with where there's multiple stakeholders, different perceptions and expectations and so on around issues.

So my job today is to help manage the process and I want to just show you the agenda. There's some copies on the table in front of you, but we're working through 'til around 3:00 o'clock today. We've got a range of presentations. We're hearing about new research around the fishery. We're hearing on perspectives from rec fishing and from the Tasmanian Conservation Trust through Jon Bryan and we're going to have quite a bit of time to talk about issues of concern. All of this feeds into the consultation process on this fishery which AFMA's running. Part of it's a way of collecting views and forwarding it up the line, and Nick will talk to us about that today.

This is the second of two of these forums. I know some of you attended last time and some haven't. What we need to do is just to find out who is in the room and also what hat you're wearing today. So what I might do is start with Nick. Could you just kick off who you are and where you're from?

Dr Nick Rayns

Executive Manager of Fisheries, Australian Fisheries Management Authority

Nick Rayns. The Executive Manager of Fisheries at the Australian Fisheries Management Authority and my main roles here are twofold. One is that I oversight a lot of management of Commonwealth fisheries and also on involvement in the Management Advisory Committee Resource Assessment Group processes in terms of oversighting them as well. I'll be talking today mainly about an overview of management as it currently stands and giving I guess, some pointers to some of the speakers who come in later on today in terms of what they'll be talking about as well.

Mr John Edwards

President, Tuna Club Tasmania

John Edwards, President of the Tuna Club of Tasmania but also wearing another hat today. John Mcgiveron President of the Tasmanian Game Fishing Association is an apology, so I'm filling in for him as well.

Mr Jon Bryan

Tasmanian Conservation Trust

Jon Bryan from the Tasmanian Conservation Trust. I'm on the Small Pelagic Fishery Resource Assessment Group and was on the MAC before it was dissolved. I'm on quite a few fishery advisory committees in Tasmania and another AFMA Committee. I work part time for the Tasmanian Conservation Trust, but I have had a bit of an interest in fisheries for some time and I'm also involved with the Stop the Trawler campaign.

Mr Peter Trott

WWF Australia Seafood Markets

Peter Trott, WWF Australia Seafood Markets. I also am the Chair of the Public Chamber of the MSC Stakeholder Council and therefore sit on the board of trustees of MSC and been involved in fisheries for a very long time as well as supply chains.

Mr Barry Baker

Environmental Consultant

I’m Barry Baker. I'm an Environment Consultant and I'm based here in Hobart. I've had a long involvement in fisheries and in particular in high catch mitigation issues and have been providing some advice to the expert panel recently on the SPF.

Mr Mike Gerner

Australian Fisheries Management Authority

Mike Gerner. Australian Fisheries Management Authority. I look after bycatch and electronic monitoring and I'll be giving a presentation today on the Vessel Management Plan, how they're formulated and what's included in there.

Ms Rebecca Hubbard

Marine Coordinator, Environment Tasmania

Rebecca Hubbard, Marine Coordinator at Environment Tasmania and Coordinator of Stop the Trawler Alliance.

Mr Brett Cleary

President, Game Fishing Association of Australia

Brett Cleary. I'm President of the Game Fishing Association of Australia and I'm here as part of the delegation from the Australian Recreational Fishing Foundation.

Mr Allan Hansard

Managing Director, Australian Recreational Fishing Foundation

Allan Hansard from the Australian Recreational Fishing Foundation

Mr Mark Nikolai

TARFish

Mark Nikolai from TARFish, the Tasmanian Association for Recreational Fishing.

Mr Tim Ward

South Australian Research and Development Institute

Tim Ward from SARDI in South Australia and I've done research on pelagic fish for quite a number of years and I'm also a member of the RAG for this fishery.

Mr John Burgess

Executive Officer, Australian National Sportfishing Association

I'm John Burgess. I'm the Executive Officer of the Australian National Sportfishing Association and I'm also here as part of the ARF contingent as well and I suppose I'll say I'm also on the New South Wales Advisory Council as well.

Ms Frances Seaborn

Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment

Frances Seaborn. I work for the Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment in commercial scalefish and I'm just here just as an observer today.

Mr Tony Smith

Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation

Tony Smith with CSIRO. I've been doing some research in this fishery.

Mr Patrick Sachs

Liaison Officer, Australian Recreational Fishing Foundation

Patrick Sacks. I'm the Liaison Officer for the Australian Recreational Fishing Foundation.

Ms Danielle Kuhn

Communication Manager, AFMA

Danielle Kuhn. I'm the Communications Manager at AFMA

Mr Simon McGuinness

Good, that's everyone, plus we've got some other company in the room.

[housekeeping discussion]

Dr Nick Rayns

General Manager, Fisheries Management

Look, what I wanted to do was first of all give a brief introduction which is about why we're here. First of all, this forum is important to AFMA. The information and advice and commentary and presentations from this forum will go forward to a number of other bodies including the AFMA Commission, so the Resource Assessment Group for this fishery group meets on Friday. The Management Advisory Committee for this Fishery meets next week and the Commission itself meets at the end of April.

So, there's a sequence of meetings and forums being held to gather up all the views, perspectives and information we have on this fishery to assist the Commission in its decision making at the end of April, and that's prior to the commencement of the new fishing season on 1May. So, this is an important part of that process.

What I'll do briefly is just give a bit of an overview of the fishery and where we are. I'm interested – I started this off with a few quotes because these are quotes that I picked up from a number of documents from Stop the Trawler Alliance and others who've commented recently on the SPF and the interesting thing for me is when I look at them, I'm thinking as a lay person. I go "Gee, I agree with a lot of this stuff." This is not rocket science. Wanting to have better protection for our fisheries, looking after our marine environment, those sorts of things, you'd be hard-pressed to find people who wouldn't agree with those statements, including a lot of people who work in AFMA, and I know in the organisations represented today.

So, what's going on? Why are we in this apparent disagreement and difficult situation? It really comes down to perspectives and expectations in my view. We're going to hear a lot about those today. As Simon has said, there's a number of speakers who will be presenting today to give you some of those perspectives and talk about their expectations, and ask some key questions about the fishery that they want answered. So that's a good thing.

Important I think one of the things I'd like to get out today is what does good look like? So when we talk about the things, we talk about a lot of things we don't like in the fishery, but what do we like? What do we want this fishery to have and to look like? Be it, size and capacity of boats, where vessels can fish, what arrangements there are to look after the interests of the recreational fishing sector etc? What do those answers actually look like? We know what the questions are. Hopefully I'll answer a few of those myself and others who speak today will do, but we may have some at the end that we still want to pursue.

So current Commonwealth Fisheries Management – we are required by law to make science-based decisions. We place a lot of emphasis on science and you'll hear a lot more about that again today. It's not something we do as a one-off. Science and scientific research is the single biggest budget item of AFMA. We spend more money on science and research than any other budget item and the next biggest budget item is our Observer Program which gathers a lot of that information from boats. So, we have some very large investments in both science and our observations of fisheries, and we'll always take those things seriously.

We are required to work in what I've termed acceptable levels of risk for our fisheries and harvest strategy policy for example. It states very clearly where we should and shouldn't have our species in terms of their biomass, the amount of fish still in the water and we have to abide by those things. There are statutory fisheries management plans in place. So each fishery including the SPF has one of those. It allocates commercial fishing rights. They are in place and we have to respect the rights of those who are granted rights too and there are other requirements that are in the plan that include things like consultation.

We are required under environmental law to take all reasonable steps to minimise our interactions with TEP, threatened, endangered and protected species and Mike Gerner will talk a lot more about that in his presentation on the Vessel Management Plan.

Within all that we try to be responsive and adaptable. Some areas are quite constrained. Others we have some latitude to work with and I hope today we'll talk about some of those.

So, SPF and the ecosystem, they are important and we all agree. They're an important part of the marine ecosystem. They mark up a remarkably small part of the marine biomass. For those who've looked through some of the historic articles on this, it literally is a few percent. We have some other species groups like lantern fish which make up a very, very large part of the marine biomass. Then there are small pelagics. They're important in the food chain, but they're not a large part of the total biomass in the ocean. We're also only harvesting four species of a very diverse range of small pelagics, species that most lay people have not heard about – Australian anchovies, Yellowtail scad, Russells mackerel. They're all out there. We don't target them. They're all part of the marine food chain.

We also know from work that the expert panel has done and others have done, that there's an ability for animals now to switch prey and Tony will talk a bit more about that in terms of our large pelagic predators. We do have some issues to deal with, with our threatened, endangered and protected species. Animals like Australian sealion and Shy Albatross aren't in great shape and we do need to make sure that our mitigation measures on all vessels, not just the one we're talking about or focusing on at the moment, deal with these issues. Shy Albatross is a major issue in many of our trawl fisheries and we're working towards addressing that across the entire fleets. Australian sea lions have been a great focus in the Gillnet Hook and Trap fishery. We've taken strong action there and we expect similar if not better standards in the SPF.

Some marine mammal populations are very healthy while others have uncertain status, particularly dolphins. We have another group of species where there isn't any information. We don't know whether they're in good or bad shape at all, and that urges caution for a fisheries management system and says again, "Be careful. Make sure you're doing what you can to avoid these animals," and again Mike will talk a bit more about that through the Vessel Management Planning process.

So key attributes to the Small Pelagic Fishery management at the moment, we have a Resource Assessment Group, a Management Advisory Committee comprised of key stakeholders. Jon's on one of those. There are others who join in. We have most of our key stakeholders represented there. Species interactions, in terms of this fishery like all our fisheries, has been through an ecological risk assessment process. Every Commonwealth fishery has been through that process at least once, some more than once, and that looks at all 2,500 species our fisheries interact with. So while we focus sometimes on one or two species and have concerns about them, we are looking at the lot. We have to keep a close eye on what we're doing with those species, particularly when they come at high risk out of this assessment process, and that's where we focus our attention.

All our fisheries have comprehensive vessel monitoring, compliance, log book and observer programs. We're probably the only jurisdiction in Australia and one of the few in the world that does this and it's something that we intend to continue and build on. Mike will talk a bit more about the monitoring side of things and the Vessel Management Plan, but I'd have to say that I am very proud of this process. I think it's an excellent piece of work. AFMA stands by it and we're building on it with things like electronic monitoring which is supporting and assisting our existing Observer Program. We have electronic log books now in some fisheries as well, so the reporting is more real time. Those are good things and we ought to make sure that we build on those. We have had a history of fishery surveys and things in this fishery and elsewhere. AFMA as I said, has a big investment in research and we will continue that significant investment.