A COLLEAGUE of mine has just returned from Europe and reports that Greenpeace considers that it’s won its campaign against super trawlers in Chile, Australia and off the African Coast, and is currently working to question their use anywhere in the world. Good stuff.
Let’s give them an A for optimism, at least in relation to Australia. Here, the Stop the Trawler Alliance continues to be worried about moves by the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation’s (FRDC’s) sustained interest in further exploiting our small pelagic fishery, and it’s not hard to see why.
Despite the interim ban on the super trawler Margiris imposed by the last Labor Government’s Tony Burke, the FRDC and AFMA continue to examine ways of more fully exploiting small pelagic stocks (sardines, herring, redbait, jack mackerel etc) – bits of the food chain on which just about every finny, furry, feathery marine predator depends.
Despite all the reassuring talk about scientifically determined quotas, and potential for sustainable harvesting to feed nations where local stocks have already been destroyed by super trawlers, fact is it only becomes economically viable to take these fish if you use a bloody big boat, or boats. That’s why smaller local operators aren’t interested and our stocks are largely pristine. And marlin and tuna, and you and I, and the seals, gannets and albatross are pretty happy with that state of affairs.
Now surely the current Federal government wouldn’t be thinking about allowing super trawlers in, given the Australian public’s support for their exclusion, and international praise for Burke’s initial decision?
Don’t bet on it.
You may already be aware that in June that very government approved the largest freezer factory trawler to operate in Australian waters in over 20 years to commence operating in the Southern Ocean off Tasmania. The 4,400 tonne, 104 metre Meridian 1 is owned by a company in Sevastopol, which makes it either Ukrainian or Russian, depending I guess on how that dispute is currently going. And it’s registered in Vanuatu and flagged in Dominica, just to keep things clear. It’s going to fish for blue grenadier. Senator Richard Colbeck, Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, reckon that’s fine because it will operate under the existing quota, and other trawlers already fish the stock.
It’s the same argument as for the small pelagics. There appear to be plenty of fish. Our local trawlers don’t fill the quota so let’s bring in foreign-owned mega trawlers to rip in to them.
Like much of what this government is currently doing with regard to the Australian environment, the decision stinks. It’s not in our long term national interest, and will make us look even more like a bunch of hicks in the international arena than we already do.
