| ... moment. You're listening to Lucinda Joes on the rural and resources report on ABC local Radio WA, a body representing Western Australia's recreational fishers, says it will not support calls for mandatory catch reporting of rock lobsters. The professional lobster sector sector will request its total catch be reduced next season from 7.3000 tonnes to 6.8000 tonnes due to sustainability concerns. And revised economic modeling. Some fishers are worried. The recreational sector takes more than its allocation of 500 500 tonnes and they want all recreational catch to be recorded. But Andrew Roland from Reckvish West says he doesn't see. A valid reason for a mandatory catch reporting system No, Joe, it's not. We wouldn't support that. We often see claims around the need to do mandatory reporting from the recreational sector coming from the commercial fishing sector, and this time it's obviously rock clubs, the fishing sector, but you know these are completely unsubstantiated. We believe the current methodology used for estimating the RECK catches is is pretty good. It's grounded well in the science and we think that's more than adequate to give an estimate of the re catch for rock lobster in particular. What is that current methodology? What does that look like? It's a range of phone diary surveys where anglers give rock lobs. Officers are given a diary. They record their catches and then they basically phone their catches back into the department. Also boat ramp surveys. We see it quite often. My office overlooks Hilary's here at the boat ramp, and I see, particularly in the middle of rock lobster season, fisheries scientists down there almost every day counting and measuring rock lobsters and doing an interview with trailer boats as they are returning back to shore. So how many people are licensed to recreationally catch lobster and WA around about 50,000 license holders each year are issued for ROC and how many of them would have their catch surveyed, either through a phone survey or a boat? Ramsey Yeah, not 100 sure on that 1. You'd have to ask the question for the department, but the U, the science that the department does is peer-reviewed. It's also forms part of the MSC, the third Party, the marine stewardship certification process that this. Fishery does get that blue tick of third party independent certification, and those methodologies are looked at through that process. Yes, but I think this reflects perhaps some of the concern that we hear, because there's say 50 odd 1000 recreational fishes, but not a clear indication of how many of them exactly report their catch, and so there is that concern about how accurate is the modelling. are you comfortable with the modelling? We are more than comfortable with the modelling. It does stack up from a peer review, science perspective, and it's from a jurisdictional perspective. We think that WA has some of the best re catch estimate methodologies and scientists. The recreational sector for Western rock lobs, so we've only allocated 5% of the total western rock lobs to catch. That's around 500 tonnes. The commercial fishing sector takes 95% of the western rock lobs to catch, so it's a very small proportion of a very important catch for Western Australia. there is 50,000 participants, so it's really important from a social benefits perspective, particularly people getting out there and wanting to catch a few craze before Christmas, and you know they should be able to go out there and do that and enjoy with their mum and dad and the family out there without having to get overburdened with unnecessary paperwork and rare tape. that would happen if the Government decided to put mandatory reporting requirements on. And is that why you don't support it because you see it as a burden? You know we're talking about filling out an app or something like that, which were always on our phones. So there's a few reasons. Firstly, from a science perspective, there's no, there's overwhelming evidence, both nationally and internationally from a science perspective, that mandatory reporting is not required in particularly the Western rock obser fishery. So what we require is the preconditions. there must be a high risk of sustainability and a need for real time monitoring, and without those two things and this fishery doesn't require them, there's plenty of biomass out there it's very sustainable, it's not being pushed right to the edge of sustainability and therefore we don't need to have that real time monitoring happening. So because, from a science perspective, they are the two preconditions that you would have to have in place to go down the pathway of mandatory reporting. There's still a number of unresolved issues related to practicality of mandatory reporting, the appropriate platform, the ease of use we. All know that wet hands on phones don't work too well. Acceptance by fishers, there's questions around how the data is validated, there's questions around privacy, and then there's a whole questions around compliance and enforcement, and none of the work has been done. So I hear these calls all the time, Joe, but there's no real solution in here to these unresolved issues. There's no need, from a science perspective, to go to real time monitoring for the recreational sector, and there's no evidence that the current system is inadequate. We don't want Mum and Dad and the kids at the boat ramp on Christmas eve when they've got a few craze in the bucket getting knocked off by fisheries officers and have the kids crying and the fit and the crayfish confiscated, because dad forgot to fill in the paperwork. I mean it's a ridiculous situation. That's Andrew Roland from re fish West, speaking to Joe Prendergast, and Andrew says recreational catch reporting is mandatory in Tasmania, where sustainability is a concern, and he believes it's ... |