Rebuilding fish stocks shouldn’t mean locking people out of the water – fishing connects families, supports mental health and drives local economies. It should mean targeted, science-based management that protects the fish, keeps people fishing and ensures sustainability for generations. This plan sets out practical actions to rebuild and strengthen demersal fish stocks, with a focus on management reform that delivers lasting community benefits.
1. Strengthen science and transparency
Principle: Better information builds better management and public confidence.
WA’s fisheries scientists do great work, but there are still limitations on how some stocks are assessed. To make good decisions that the community can trust, we need to lift confidence in the evidence base by improving data quality, increasing transparency, and ensuring fishers’ on-water observations contribute to the science.
In practice, this means:
- Establishing fishery-independent sampling.
- Developing recruitment indices (as used in the rock lobster fishery) to track year-class strength before fish enter the fishery.
- Integrating fisher knowledge and on-water observations to fill data gaps and strengthen understanding of local stock trends.
- Implementing a comprehensive science-led approach to developing shark bite-off solutions.
Stronger, more open science gives everyone confidence that decisions are based on facts – not assumptions.
2. Protect spawning fish
Principle: Protect fish where and when it matters most.
Healthy fish stocks begin with successful spawning. Species such as dhufish, pink snapper and red emperor have predictable breeding patterns, making them more vulnerable at certain times. Recfishwest supports stronger protection of spawning grounds with consistent rules across all sectors, based on the best available science and informed by fisher observations.
In practice, this means:
- Applying targeted seasonal closures to protect spawning fish where and when they’re most vulnerable.
- All sectors should pause fishing during peak dhufish spawning periods.
- For species that form highly localised aggregations, such as pink snapper and baldchin groper, current seasonal protections should continue, and additional site-specific spawning grounds should be identified and seasonally protected.
Even where science is still catching up, we can act on what we already know. Protecting likely spawning habitats increases spawning success and helps fish stocks recover faster. Advocacy and stewardship of our community has already seen this happen in Cockburn Sound resulting in more fish and greater fishing.
3. Reduce catch and protect key fish habitat to rebuild biomass
Principle: Everyone has a role in rebuilding the fishery, but action must focus where it makes the biggest difference to increasing the biomass.
Increasing the biomass of WA’s demersal species means reducing total removals of fish and protecting the habitats that underpin spawning and recruitment. In some areas, overfishing continues to suppress recovery – a problem that extends beyond any one sector and highlights the need for targeted responses to protect and grow biomass and fishery productivity. Increasing biomass is the surest sign of progress, and that means focusing on the trajectory of recovery, ensuring it continues upward even if the timeframe is slower.
In practice, this means:
- Apply smarter, fairer catch limits statewide across all sectors. This includes refined recreational bag and boat limits, starting with resetting the dhufish limit to one per person and two per boat – a measure Recfishwest has consistently supported.
- Rationalise West Coast seasonal closures to improve sustainability and access. The current set-up, including a short September school-holiday reopening, creates “bookending” fishing effort spikes and adds complexity. A more flexible, evidence-based design could deliver better outcomes for both fish and fishers.
- Protect key demersal habitats that support feeding and breeding, recognising their importance in natural recovery and resilience. This includes ensuring industrial and coastal developments, such as solar salt projects, ports, dredging and other marine infrastructure, are planned and managed to avoid damaging critical demersal habitats like reefs, seagrass meadows, and soft-sediment nursery zones.
- Support the restoration, creation, and enhancement of key demersal habitats using seagrass reseeding shellfish reefs, and purpose-built structures.
- Maintain recovery measures until biomass targets are sustained for multiple years, ensuring management adapts to results rather than fixed timelines.
Keep management focussed on biomass outcomes, not artbitary timeframes with the goal of steady, measurable recovery and resilience.
4. Manage regionally to maximise community benefit
Principle: Manage different regions for what they do best – balancing social, economic and environmental outcomes.
WA’s vast coastline supports diverse fisheries, communities and environments. From Exmouth to Esperance, demersal fisheries generate immense social, lifestyle and tourism value, underpinning coastal economies and family fishing traditions. In the north, waters are naturally more productive and support larger-scale commercial fisheries, which already supply most of WA’s demersal seafood and world-class recreational and tourism fishing experiences in places like Broome, Dampier, Karratha and the Pilbara coast – vital to local communities and regional economies.
In practice, this means:
- Government policy should explicitly acknowledge regional differences and guide management to reflect them.
- Prioritising recreational and tourism access in southern half of the state where demersal fishing drives lifestyle and local economies.
- Celebrating northern recreational and tourism fisheries and ensure they remain healthy and accessible
- Maintaining seafood supply from northern waters, where productivity and scale support commercial harvest.
- Investing in alternative fishing options to retain the social and economic and wellbeing benefits of fishing while redirecting fishing effort away from vulnerable demersal fish stocks.
- Setting regional objectives that reflect local social and economic importance rather than applying one-size-fits-all rules.
Managing for what each region does best delivers the greatest benefit for all Western Australians.
Our message
Rebuilding WA’s demersal fish stocks is achievable, and it doesn’t require shutting down fishing. Our plan reflects how important time on the water is to a lot to WA fishers, while supporting the recovery of the fish we all care about most.
This is a state-wide challenge, from the South Coast to the Kimberley, where different species, fisheries, and management regions face unique pressures. The system itself is showing strain, and this plan sets out how new, smarter, fairer and more transparent management can deliver better outcomes.
By basing decisions on stronger science, protecting spawning fish, reducing catches responsibly, and focusing on the trajectory of biomass, particularly for key species like dhufish, we can ensure WA’s demersal fish stocks, and the experience they support, remain strong for generations.
Management must evolve to reflect where the greatest community benefits are delivered, ensuring fisheries like the west coast demersal remain vibrant recreational and tourism assets, while building a modern, adaptive system that works across the whole State.
