ACCORDING to an ABC news report, the Geelong Star is struggling to turn a profit after being banned from one zone and night fishing following recent dolphin deaths.
The ABC report said the ship was forced to modify its nets after accidentally killing eight dolphins and some seals in its first two trips this year.
Grahame Turk, chair of the Small Pelagic Fishery Association, said the Fisheries Management Authority has imposed “draconian measures” on the trawler, excluding it from one zone for six months and banning night fishing.
“Now some of these fish are only really catchable at night, red bait is only really ever caught at night, so they’re not able to catch those fish,” he told the ABC.
“They’ve seen the marks on their sounders at night, but then in the day time those fish are gone.
“So it is struggling.”
“We said at the time that those measures are draconian.
“There are a lot of measures going on to try to minimise harm to dolphins. Nobody wants to kill dolphins.
“They currently have a barrier at the front of the net to stop dolphins going into the net.
“But there was one dolphin killed, because the regulations required them to keep an exclusion hatch area to be open further down the net, and that’s where a dolphin actually went in.
“Now that regulation has been changed and they can close that while they’ve got the barrier at the front, that makes sense.”
Dolphins are killed in fishing, as an “unfortunate fact of life”, Mr Turk said.
Originally published at www.abc.net.au.
