16-Dec-2011

Most of us enjoy our fresh seafood, but having a better understanding of where it comes from and buying produce that is sustainably harvested, helps support a healthy fishing industry as well as a local marine environment.

Chair of Oceanwatch Australia, Brad Warren, recently flew up from Newcastle to showcase the recent work and practices undertaken by the fishing industry and hosted a tour of Moreton Bay, with support from SEQ Catchments, which was attended by community members as well as representatives from various State Government

‘‘Moreton Bay is a unique part of the world, offering the community many recreational benefits, wonderful marine life as well as great seafood,’’ he said.

‘‘We run a series of these tours throughout Australia to give local communities a better understanding of what ‘sustainable fishing’ really means and why it is important.’’

The tour included a stop off at the Gold Coast Tiger Prawns aquaculture facility, a 100 Hectare facility with a current capacity of nearly 700 tonnes of prawns per annum. There is a huge demand from consumers for good quality prawns, however harvesting from the wild at unsustainable rates can lead to disastrous consequences for wild prawn populations as well as other local marine species and habitat. This has required suppliers to consider aquaculture practices where every prawn is bred on the farm.

Nick Moore, the General Manager, gave a thorough overview of their operation,

‘‘We keep our ponds well aerated, use controlled feed application and absolutely no chemicals’’ he said.

He emphasised the importance of having ‘good water quality’ for a successful business. The multi-million dollar operation ensures that any water taken out of the Logan River to fill their ponds is well treated before it goes back into the river with 3 staff devoted full-time to water quality monitoring and improvement. The prawn farm effectively improves the condition of 19.5 million litres of river water every day before it enters Moreton Bay and several important fish habitats downstream.

Later in the afternoon, guests were taken on a boat tour adjacent to the Myora Green Zone within Moreton Bay Marine Park and were given a demonstration of ‘tunnel net’ fishing in action. Tunnel net fishing is a technique which makes use of the natural dropping of the tide to herd fish into the end of the net known as the tunnel. New practices developed and adopted by the fishing industry over the past decade have greatly reduced the by-catch of undersize fish and removed any impacts to species such as turtles and stingrays.

John Page from the Moreton Bay Seafood Industry Association stated that it is in the interest of fishermen as well as the wider community to support sustainable fishing practices. Not only does it ensure a healthy regeneration of fish stocks, but also minimises detrimental impacts to local marine species and habitats such as turtles, dugongs and seagrass.

This project is supported by OceanWatch Australia, through funding from the Australian Government's ''Caring for our Country''.

For more informationa: Oceanwatch Australia Program Manager, Simon Rowes, simon@oceanwatch.rog.au or 02 9660 2262