thats good news. however if there is more crabs to get there might be more people that get greedy and take more than they should. not saying it doesnt already happn. at least the money isnt getting wasted on stupid stuff

 Good idea but I think they should try to buy out the cockburn lics first so they can open that to the recs taking some of the pressure off the peel in the process .

Good job I’m thinking  

 River season.

 I reckon we need to increase the size of crabs 127mm is only just worth eating, 135 like the pros use is much better and would lead to more eggs from the larger females.

I would like to see the opening of the season put back a month also as this will give the crabs a chance to grow to a decent size. At the start of the season now you get that many crabs missing multiple legs and claws from being caught found to be just under legal size and then thrown back it is a bloody shame as a great percentage of them die.

So far as people being greedy and breaking the law with under size crabs I think the fisheries crew do a quite reasonable job at catching the mongrels with the resources (people) they have and we should all do our bit to help them by contacting fisheries if we see people doing the wrong thing and robbing our kids of their fishing future.

It will be very interesting to see the difference the buying back of licences affects the yellow fin whiting numbers, for me last year was quite poor as it was for a few of my friends and when you see just about every hole in a pros net filled with yellow fin it can't but take a toll on the bio mass of the fishery. I still stand by my view that there is a place for the pros to get fresh fish for the markets just that there needs to be a tight quota system in place that is rigidly enforce and monitored.

Great project RECFISHWEST well done.

Excellent news, agreed, hopefully something can be done for Cockburn Sound.....

Brilliant news! I met the pro that works out of Dawsville very early one morning and got chatting to him for a while and is a top bloke and the old salt's body had seen better days so that's at least one licence that'll be sold back. He had crates upon crates of crabs in his boat just sitting out in the sun which and not that I ever have will put me off ever buying crabs from a store.

 ...and there are something like ten or eleven licences in the Peel/Harvey Inlets. So maybe three or four get bought out.

The real worry is when/if Point Grey development goes ahead. The pros are most likely accepting this buyout because they know their licences will be worth considerably less once dredging for hoity toities and their flash canal homes kicks in.

This (point grey development) is the elephant in the room that a lot of people don't want mentioned because of what I believe (as well as a lot of others)it will do to the crabs and fish in the Peel Harvey estuary system when the dredging starts to get into the sub strata (soil) at the bottom of the water way. All the nasties of the past decades of run off and such will be disturbed and the effect could well be catastrophic.

When the fishery collapses you don't have to be a son or daughter of Einstein to work out what it will do to the tourist industry that the local business rely on yet a lot of them think it will be great for Mandurah. Rubbish .

 is the single biggest threat to peel-harvey crab and whiting.  The entire eastern side of the estuary will be stuffed for more canals and marinas.  At the moment it has some protection because of access but once those dual lanes go in along Greenlands rd then say goodbye.

Time for a specific Point Grey discussion me thinks

See General Discussion forum