Well this should be interesting. It's a good show even it's labour skewed.

 # 1 – “Inside Job”: Ex-AFMA Chairman is Seafish Tasmania Director, whilst another was part of the AFMA committee that doubled the quota for Seafish Tasmania.

# 2 – “Pet scientists”:  Ex-AFMA Director is used as “pre-eminent scientist”. Interesting to know how many of his studies are AFMA sponsored... and now Seafish Tasmania are promising an additional $400K for studies to be managed by AFMA.

# 3 – “Twisted science”: Precautionary principle means reducing quotas as underlying data/studies become out of date. The last study aged another year (10 years old) – but the “scientists” doubled the quota this year. When Gerry Geen says “the science is solid” he really is laughing at us. 

# 4 – “Commercial decision, not scientific”: AFMA documents (only available when the Freedom of Information Act was used) show that the quota increase was on the request of Seafish Tasmania, which required the increased quota in order to use the super trawler.

# 5 – “Illegal AFMA quota decision process?”:  The Ombudsman has determined that there is sufficient reason to investigate the legality of the decision process that lead to the doubling of the Jack Mackerel quota.

# 6 – “New quota is a 600% increase in the catch”: Less than 10% of the quota was caught over the last 6 years. By only staying to its quota the super trawler would catch 6 times what all 70 license-holders caught last year. AFMA’s reference to “responsible quota increases” is deliberately misleading.

# 7 – “Activation of dormant quota”: The super trawler will only break even at 15,000t according to Seafish Tasmania. Thus they will increase their 18,500t by taking up the dormant quota held by many of the other 70 license-holders. This is a further 600% increase on last season’s catch.

# 8 – “Further quota increases”: By paying $400K for further studies, Seafish Tasmania will be able to move the fishery from Tier2 (data > 5 years old; quota currently limited to 5.0% of biomass) to Tier1 (data < 5 years old; so quota limited can be increased to 17.5% of biomass). This is a further possible increase of 3000% of last season’s catch.

# 9 – “Resident fish populations”: AFMA and Seafish Tasmania repeatedly indicate that the fish that are taken from one area will be replaced due to the mobile nature of these fish. However, during the latest discussions between the representatives of the recreational fishers and Seafish Tasmania some CSIRO studies were disclosed which indicate the likelihood of RESIDENT populations. This means that once they are caught they are not replaced. It is thought that this is the same reason why the enormous surface schools that were once present in Tasmania no longer exist and have not recovered in the many years since trawling for them stopped.

# 10 – “Food chain collapse risk”: No study has been performed on the impact on the many other species that rely on these pelagic fish as their source of food (seals, dolphins, some whales, penguins, tuna, game-fish, sharks, and seabirds). These all have much slower recovery cycles.

# 11 – “Localized depletion”: No safeguards in place. Even if the pelagic fish are mobile, vast areas can be cleared and the remaining fish chased off. All of their predators are slower to repopulate. The recreational fishermen and tourists will take even longer to return… meanwhile whole communities could be devastated by even just a couple of poor seasons.

# 12 – “Impact on the Environment”: Has not been addressed. Legally the super trawler can fish in the marine parks. The indirect impact on other species is not measured.

# 13 – “Large and deadly by-catch”: AFMA claims “targeted fishing” results in almost no by-catch yet AFMA’s own reports on their website clearly state that seals are present in over 50% of the time. Seal exclusion devices have not been tested on this type of ship.

# 14 – “Impact on other commercial fisheries”: Has not been evaluated.

# 15 – “Impact on the recreational fishing industry”: Has not been evaluated.

# 16 – “Impact on tourism”: Has not been evaluated. (Recreational fishing; penguin watching; dives with seals and dolphins; whale watching; …)

# 17 – “Impact on economy”: Has not been evaluated. The net increase in economic value would be massively outweighed by the negative impacts on many of Australia’s 5 million fishers and the multi-billion $ economy that it generates. The maximum revenue of $18 million for the super trawler (most of it going offshore or just to pay for fuel) needs to be compared with a reduction in the commercial, recreational and tourism industries along the eastern and southern sea-board of Australia.

# 18 – “Poor investment for Australia”: A large proportion of the $18 million revenue will be used to pay the foreign owners for the ship. Another large portion will go to fuel consumption (no value for Australia). 66% of the profits will go to foreign owners. Only 33% of profits will remain in Australia (in the pockets of less than 5 people).

# 19 – “No balance between Risk vs Reward”: The number of Australian beneficiaries can probably be counted on one hand, whilst those exposed to high risks is in the hundreds of thousands if not millions of people.

# 20 – “Super powerful super trawlers”: The scale/power of these ships and their hunting efficiency cannot be balanced by nature. Man has built "beyond sustainable" and this is proven by the fact that there is not one place on this planet that has a healthy fishery operated by ships of this scale. They are so effective at sweeping the seas clean that mother nature cannot possibly keep up – whether it be in localized areas or whole regions.

# 21 – “Weakly defined monitoring”: This ship, its captain and its owners are the equivalent of a convicted repeat-offender "rapist" of other fished-out areas. Our fisheries are making them excited... Do you really think that AFMA’s monitoring coverage (10% level) is appropriate?

Please join the outrage by signing the petition http://t.co/3fW8Ub6n and joining in on the nearest protest rallies. Details are at https://www.facebook.com/StopTheSuperTrawlers.

 show tonight, plenty of oppersition to these proposals i'm sure!!

  Sea-Kem - Labour Skewed, i wasnt aware of that, i know the Liberals get more laugh's!!

 Well done Jody. That is an outstanding summary of all the issues

thank you Jody for the work you have done for all of us

Jody, that is great information.  Where did you get it from?  Would you mind if I post this on another forum.  It would be good to get this knowledge out there.

Federal Environment Minister Tony Burke on Q&A last night: "The no-take zones for recreational fishing ... for example off the Queensland coast you have to go out hundreds of kilometres before you reach an area where you are not allowed to drop a line under the proposal. If you are taking your child out to learn to fish in a tinny 400km you are unlikely to get back that night."
What about 5km off Perth Tony! 6km off Busselton!
Lying much?

Furthermore, he says he can't stop the trawler under international law. He appears to be hiding behind the UN Law of the Sea Treaty...which more or less states that other countries can access resources we aren't using, in this case fish stocks.

What a joke. What does that say about the entire marine park process then, are we simply paving the way for more super trawlers?

The whole thing has become high farce.

Anyone that votes for this mob, or the greens, needs their head read.