thought we recs would be in the firing line again over licences etc some time into the future
not sure how it would impact in WA as we are already heavily licenced and managed imo
get your head into this below
hezzy

Productivity Commission recommends tighter regulation of recreational fishers, says the sector's been treated with "benign neglect"

ABC Rural By Anna Vidot

Productivity Commission says Australia has treated recreational fishing with "benign neglect", and has recommended that all recreational fishers be licensed in future.

It noted that the recreational catch matches or even exceeds the commercial take for a number of species around the country, and recommended five-yearly surveys of recreational fisheries to get a clearer picture of that.

By contrast, the Commission argued that tighter regulations on commercial fishers were "discouraging innovation" and increasing costs, and should be reformed.

The findings were contained in a draft report, which looked at regulation of Australia's recreational and commercial fishing sectors.

Commissioner Melinda Cilento said the government-ordered review found the impact of recreational fishing on fish stocks hasn't always been clearly understood or regulated.

"We know there are plenty of recreational fishers out there, but there isn't a lot of up to date information on how much fish recreational fishers are catching and where they're catching it from. That sort of information is really important to enabling sustainable management of fish stocks and species," she said.

The report noted that many recreational fishers were already licensed, but recommended that be expanded to all the whole sector nationwide, through a low-cost licensing regime.

"The importance of licensing, for us, is not about raising revenue but about using that as a means to get a better understanding of who's fishing, where are they fishing, what are they catching. It gives us an opportunity to better inform people about the rules and regulations of that," Commissioner Cilento said.

She cited NSW's mulloway and yellow kingfish fisheries, and South Australia's King George whiting fishery, as examples where the recreational take was significant or even exceeds that of commercial fishermen, and noted that recreational fishers have been able to increase their take as scanning technology has improved and boats have grown bigger.

Productivity Commission calls for change to "out of date" commercial fishing regulations

The Productivity Commission argued that the burden of regulations aimed at keeping fisheries sustainable, has fallen more heavily on the commercial sector than on recreational fishers, and that some of those regulations are "out of date".

"They're not enabling commercial fishers to innovate and develop their own best practices, and they're not the best methods available to ensure that catch limits are met," Commissioner Cilento said.

"So, [regulations about] the size of boats, the size of nets, the types of lines, those kinds of things. When you impose restrictions on that, it makes it difficult for fishers to develop new approaches and new methods which might not be consistent with those types of rules, but you're also not targeting what you're interested in, which is the number of fish caught."

Debate over the size of fishing vessels hit the national political agenda in 2012, with the arrival of the supertrawler FV Margiris (subsequently re-named the Abel Tasman) in waters off southern Australia.

Amid community uproar, the then Labor federal government issued a two-year ban on supertrawlers.

The Liberal government made that ban permanent in December 2014, closing Australian fisheries to factory vessels of more than 130 metres in length.

Commissioner Cilento would not be drawn on the manner in which the report's recommendation in favour of loosening commercial fishing restrictions took into account concerns about the environmental impact of that action.

"I think the point to make there is that the report makes clear that Australia's doing a pretty good job in terms of managing its fish stocks, in terms of sustainability and those environmental aims.

"The Fisheries Research and Development Corporation has concluded that 90 per cent of stocks are currently managed sustainably, which is a great outcome. The challenge in the future is to make sure that we can continue to achieve that performance.

"That's why you need best practice regulation, and that's why you need to take into consideration the catch of all sectors [both recreational and commercial]."

More to come.

p://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-08-31/productivity-commission-regulation-recreational-fishing/7801118