While over half of Tasmania’s coastal species remain sustainable, unsustainable levels of fishing have depleted stocks of the most popular commercial and recreational scalefish species.
The University of Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) has released its evaluation of the state’s key fishery species in the Tasmanian Scalefish Fishery Assessment for 2022/23.
Using new commercial and recreational catch data from the 2022/23 season, stocks from 22 different species were assessed as sustainable, depleting, depleted or recovering.
“The results reveal more than half of the fisheries species assessed remained healthy with 11 species classified as sustainable,” lead author and IMAS research fellow Dr Ruth Sharples said.
“But there is high fishing pressure on the most popular species including Sand Flathead, Southern Calamari and Striped Trumpeter.”
The data also suggests that the Southern Calamari region in the South-East and East Coast have been depleted below critical levels, while in the Northern region Southern Calamari has been as classified as depleting.
“Because we haven’t seen any clear sign of recovery, the Southern and Eastern region have been classified as depleted,” Dr Sharples said. “They are also heavily influenced by environmental variability.”
Independent fishery surveys have indicated low abundances of legal-sized Southern Sand Flathead in South-East and Eastern Tasmania, areas where the species face heavy fishing pressure.
“Small flatheads appear to be abundant, but legal-sized individuals are rare and female spawning biomass has likely been depleted below critical levels in most regions,” IMAS researcher and co-author Dr Nils Krueck said.
Dr Sharples said scalefish stock monitoring was continually being improved through logbook refinements, collection of fisheries independent data and refining analysis methods.
“Our goal is to improve the population estimates for these valuable species, ensuring long-term access to these highly valued fishery resources for communities.”
Cover image: Jackass Morwong.
Credit: Rick Stuart-Smith RLS