Fishing has undergone great change in NSW, indeed the whole of Australia, in the last six decades. The positives and negatives of some of this change are discussed throughout this book. The suggestion that problems of previous times are being solved at an acceptable rate is not consistent with the available evidence.
It is reasonable to assume that the future will unveil improvements in the traditional management of fisheries and marine environments more generally. But new or increasing threats, such as climate change, will continue to provide challenges. Future management will need to change existing practices. These changes will create new challenges, not just for the many individual fishers.
Fishing gear and technology will continue to make fishing more efficient, facilitating greater enjoyment for many. There will also be change in social attitudes to fishing. Prominent among the social benefits of change will be acceleration of the increasing participation in fishing by women and girls. The continued development of gear that is more refined, lighter and more responsive is one factor that will help attract more women. This will likely be more apparent in the types of fishing, such as fly-fishing, where subtlety and finesse displace somewhat crass practices, such as brutally casting a 1-pound weight, live mullet and 4-ounce sinker off the rocks into the face of strong southerly winds (chapter 8).
Recreational fishing must have had a significant impact on the abundance of many fish species, not only jewfish, since the good old days. This impact is continuing. As a percentage of the remaining population it is likely to be increasing for at least some species. There is also little doubt that recreational fishing requires much more stringent and precise management that it had in days gone by if it is to prosper. Fisheries management in NSW and Australia more generally is undoubtedly better than it was in 1960. But will it, and more general environmental management, continue to improve at a rate that can ensure fishing will be better over the next sixty years?
The use of jewfish as a benchmark species for assessing the effectiveness of future management in identifying problems and addressing them will likely remain appropriate. The strength of the correlation between the increased aggregate recreational fishing power and the decline in the apparent abundance of jewfish, however, makes it all too convenient to currently assign all blame and not look further. But there is not definitive proof of singular cause and effect. To the contrary, there are many pieces of evidence that collectively leave little doubt that there are many stressors, additional to fishing of all sorts, that have had negative impacts on at least most fish populations. Many of these stressors will, in the absence of fundamental change in environmental management, likely have even greater impact as human populations continue to increase.
While singular blame must be avoided, all prominent impacts, including recreational fishing, must be addressed. Recreational fishing will require much more precise management than it has been subjected to over the last sixty years. It is imperative that this management is not only effective but is accepted by the broader community to be so. The abundance of key species, such as jewfish, will be high on civil society’s list of indicators of the social standing of the sport.
The paucity of the data on recreational effort and catch is a major reason why it is impossible to describe with confidence what the contribution of recreational fishing to declining fish populations, including those of jewfish, has been. The data on the NSW commercial fishery for jewfish are better but still inadequate for ensuring confidence in the resulting stock assessments, or for the attribution of cause and effect. They are, however, adequate to describe the considerable reduction in both the magnitude and distribution of commercial effort and catch that has occurred in the last six decades. They are unfortunately still not sufficient to remove uncertainty over such fundamental questions as whether or not the current reduced level of commercial catch is still more than the greatly reduced stocks of jewfish can withstand. Commercial catch may therefore remain a poor predictor, or even measure, of future changes.
In combination, the meagre data sets on the two forms of fishing for jewfish are adequate to at least confirm that the recreational catch now exceeds the commercial catch. The best of the recreational data suggests this domination is likely to be still increasing, probably accelerating. The necessity to determine the impact of this poorly described recreational catch has therefore assumed increasing urgency. There is little doubt that if the management of recreational fishing is to get better, more precise data on recreational effort and catch will be essential.
Concurrent with recognition of the need for better data on the impacts of recreational fishing, civil society has begun to accept the claim by many fishers and fisheries managers that fish populations are being stressed by much more than fishing. The global, regional and local manifestations of more and bigger, even global, threats are becoming obvious. Prominent among these insidious, broad threats are climate change and numerous types of pollution. Every observant angler who has been fishing for more than a decade or two will have witnessed changes in climatic and oceanic conditions. He/she will likely have correctly attributed at least some altered fishing conditions and outputs, such as catches, to these changes. That climate will continue to change, and affect fishing outcomes, cannot be disputed, even in the unlikely event that human impacts on this change can be completely arrested by 2050, or any other arbitrary date. What the altered outcomes for fisheries over the next six decades or so will be is a far more complex question. It does not currently have a definitive answer.
The distribution of many marine species will continue to change in response to the most prominent manifestation of current climate change: global warming. Increases in ocean temperatures are generally accepted, even by most of those who remain skeptical about their cause or causes.
Humans tend not to like change that they did not deliberately initiate. We will rail against most increases in oceanic temperatures. There will be numerous fishing-related effects of these increases that will be obvious, such as changes in the distribution and local abundances of many species. Of more direct physical impact on global human well-being will be sea-level rise, which will have many consequences, including coastal inundation and even possible total loss of some low-lying islands and displacement of the communities they support. These are global oceanic issues of great concern. They require global solutions. But the impact of climate change on marine fish and fisheries will likely be considerably less than the impacts on terrestrial environments and ecosystems. Prominent among terrestrial impacts will be increased fires, storms and floods. Even basic changes in temperature will force many species up against immovable boundaries, such as the interfaces with oceans and the tops of mountains. The consequences are anticipated to be profound.
Marine environments are fundamentally different to their terrestrial counterparts, and even freshwater systems. They are fluid and interconnected with relatively few hard boundaries. Many marine species have biological characteristics that have evolved over millions of years to ameliorate the impacts of temperature fluctuations. Attributes such as the ability to be constantly mobile and to swim great distances are prominent. Plus, most marine fish species produce huge numbers of widely broadcast, neutrally buoyant, eggs that range with ocean currents. Even sessile species, such as many corals, spawn into the open ocean so their progeny can be widely dispersed. Such dispersal, over time, facilitates successful movement of whole populations to areas which, because of change, have become more favourable. Compared to their terrestrial counterparts most fish species, even those that are not highly mobile as adults, have considerable insurance against numerous environmental events, including global warming. Seasonal migrations, often triggered by temperature change, are the norm for many species, including most of those that are the targets for fishers in the coastal waters of NSW. These regular, frequent, or even episodic movements are often extensive. In the future they may become even more so.
While many species will simply move as temperatures increase, there will be other impacts. The exact nature of the effects of these on fish and fisheries is uncertain. Change will bring challenges for many species, but it will likely also benefit others. What is more assured is that the impacts on marine ecosystems of other outcomes from human intervention, such as the many forms of pollution, will be more consistently negative than those from temperature change.
The unprotected nature of the millions of small eggs that provide fundamental insurance for many species against the threat from future temperature fluctuations, somewhat perversely, makes them particularly vulnerable to water-borne pollutants. Marine species have, over millions of years, evolved to deal with changes in oceanic temperatures; numerous ice-ages and warming events have been key drivers of that evolution. But evolution has not accommodated human pollution of the world’s oceans; it has had no need to until the last few hundred years. Events over such limited time as a few centuries have little demonstrable impact on evolution.
While fishers should not be exempted from proportionate support for the amelioration of global temperature change, their future fishing activities face more direct environmental challenges. Pollution is a global issue, but it can also have enormous regional, local and point source impacts on fish and marine systems. These impacts, and those of coastal development and introduced organisms can be far more immediate than those of changing temperature. Individual recreational fishers will likely find the resulting changes more personally challenging. Changes to the Kingscliff rocks and Cudgen Creek in the last sixty years (chapters 21 and 22) are examples of local expression of much broader problems. And the available evidence strongly suggests that even deliberate changes to both of these examples are not yet finished.
The NSW Marine Estate Management Authority (MEMA), on its creation in 2014 catalysed evaluation of the State-wide threats to marine ecosystems by initiating a Threat and Risk Assessment (TARA) approach to management. Put simply, this strategy was based on the sound logic of first identifying and prioritising the problems before deciding on what action to take. Many recreational fishers will remember that MEMA replaced the Marine Park Management Authority, whose actions were dominated by closing large swathes of State waters to fishing and then calling them ‘marine protected areas’. Such action was taken before identifying the threats to the State’s total ecosystems, or even the threats to the contents of the areas that were to be closed to fishing.
Governments throughout Australia have for the last five decades adopted the default position of closing areas to fishing when marine protection was necessary without first identifying what protection was needed against. Closing numerous NSW estuaries to fishing following total ‘fish kills’ resulting from acidic run-off from land modified for agriculture and closing Sydney Harbour to commercial fishing because it was so polluted the fish should not be eaten by humans, are but two of many examples. This negative predisposition towards fishing distorted public perception of the threat fishing actually represented to marine ecosystems. It made it easier for successive governments to ignore the real threats.
The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park has been a classical example of where the failure to first identify the threats before deciding on the management action led to the failure to provide the protection that was necessary. Yes, the Reef is special and enclosing it in a Park for which special efforts were needed to protect it was appropriate. But fifty years after the Park’s creation and more than twenty years after almost tenfold increases in fishing closures, the Reef is internationally recognised to be under great threat. It has finally been recognised that management was seriously distracted from addressing the real threats by assuming that closing areas to fishing was the most urgent management need, and that such closures would indeed provide appropriate and adequate protection. Fishing, as managed in Queensland and Australia more generally, had never been one of the major threats to the future of the Reef. But even more importantly, what threat it did represent could be effectively and relatively easily fixed by traditional fisheries management practices, such as effort and catch controls over the whole area of individual fisheries that were specifically determined to be a problem. Even closure of areas to fishing as an allocation to divers or other resource users could have been efficiently handled under state or national fisheries management Acts. It was the other threats for which appropriate management acts were missing.
In NSW, MEMA’s Threat and Risk Assessment led to assessing and prioritising the total threats to the State’s marine ecosystems. It is most significant for recreational fishers that of the total stressors to the coastal ecosystems of the marine estate, twelve were assessed to represent greater threat to conservation than was recreational fishing. Commercial fishing was even lower down the priority list. It was also significant that MEMA concluded that the marine estate should be managed as an entity, not as disjointed pieces of a puzzle.
Even though the data available on the impacts of the catches by fishers of all persuasions are meagre, they are still more informative than the extremely sparse evidence available on the impacts on fish populations of each of the many higher priority causes of stress. The accumulating impacts on local ecosystems, and the resources they support, of the many threats, such as habitat destruction and pollution, remain unquantified.
Then there is the serious lack of reliable assessments of the impacts of the more than 400 foreign marine species that had by 2008 been recorded as introductions into Australian waters. There is a worrying lack of data on how these foreign species, whose numbers continue to increase, displace or even interact with, native species. Knowledge of their impact on biodiversity in general, or on the abundance and distribution of individual species, such as jewfish, into the future has hardly progressed beyond the crystal ball phase. It is, though, sobering to contemplate the likely impact on ecosystems and biodiversity, at least as measured by species richness, of more than 400 introductions, and to do so in the context of the knowledge that not a single fish species has ever been fished to extinction in Australia. Fishing does change abundances but, when well managed, it does not eliminate species or introduce new ones.
Perhaps even more pertinent to the plight of jewfish in the years ahead is the possible impact of pathogens and parasites, including those that have been, or will be, introduced, translocated or invigorated by environmental or chemical change. The devastation caused by the introduced Californian herpes virus on Australia’s pilchard populations is still fresh in memories of many NSW fishers. Then there was the State-wide dramatic decline in the pipi population a decade or so ago, for which commercial fishing was falsely blamed. Localised depletion of pipis by commercial harvesters on a small number of beaches was confused with State-wide species decline, at least until parasites were detected and more holistic analyses carried out.
While our fisheries management has been a lot less than perfect, we have since the good old days of the 1960s made considerable progress, even if it did not begin in earnest until the late 1980s. By 2020 we were at least trying. And we have had numerous evidence-based successes: recovery plans for previously overfished species, such as garfish and lobsters, have been demonstrated to be effective. Similar recoveries have been more numerous in Commonwealth-managed fisheries, where it is significant that recreational fishing has proportionately much less impact.
Initiating recovery in overfished stocks has, worldwide, proven more difficult for those stocks on which subsistence and/or recreational fishers have a greater impact than commercial fishers. This problem can be expected to worsen in the years ahead if stock levels become increasingly reduced, primarily by these activities. When stocks are seriously depleted, it commonly becomes unprofitable for commercial fishers to continue to target the species, unless there are prominent seasonal aggregations of individuals for activities such as spawning. At seriously reduced levels commercial fishers have proven likely to support and adhere to restrictions, or even a complete closure of a fishery, provided there is a time limit on the restriction. This support has been facilitated by property rights management.
Commercial fishers’ support for a management strategy is much more likely if each individual fisher’s proportional share of the resource after recovery is guaranteed to be the same as it was at the time of the restriction. Individual fishers can anticipate direct personal benefit from stock recovery resulting from short-term reductions. Mechanisms that guarantee individual anglers the same benefit from a fishing closure have proven elusive. Benefits for communities are commonly harder to sell to individuals who must bear the short-term burden of change but cannot be guaranteed personal benefit from the outcome of the change. Furthermore, at low stock levels a significant incentive can remain for some individual anglers to catch even one fish, particularly if it is an unusually large one, such as a member of a remnant spawning stock. As there are so many anglers, a catch of one each per day, or even one over a period of more than a day, can have a big impact. There is also the problem of inadvertent catches of remnant individuals by the increasing number of fishers targeting other species. The significance of the impact of each incident, albeit inadvertent, will increase as the size of the fish population diminishes.
Exploitation of living organisms, such as fish, will always constitute at least a potential threat that must be monitored and, where necessary, managed. Under democratic governments, managers usually attempt to balance the restriction of this threat with the benefits the activity delivers, such as those from harvesting food. Sustainability of the population of the species in question is usually a prerequisite.
The threat from fishing to the sustainability of most of Australia’s marine species has been shown to be manageable with traditional fisheries management techniques, predominantly, science-based effort and catch controls. Sanctioned continuation of overfishing is rare. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that targeted management of specific threatening fishing activities over the full area in which they occur can arrest stock problems and lead to recovery. Effective fisheries management can be surprisingly simple, provided it is based on sound resource assessment science. Major obstacles are the quality of the science and the will of governments to take effective action, even when the science is beyond dispute.
The most obvious marine fisheries management successes in Australia to date have resulted from targeted restrictions dominated by controls on commercial fisheries. Even though there has been extremely severe restriction on recreational and commercial fishing for jewfish in NSW, the population of this iconic species continues to decline. The path for greater success in the future has not yet been prescribed. NSW Fisheries has, however, stated that development and implementation of a new Harvest Strategy for Mulloway are high priorities.
Correcting the current plight of jewfish, at least in NSW, will likely require a significant shift in management priorities and an increase in action. This could be expected to result in even tighter control of recreational catches, even if only temporarily. Hopefully, it will also result in much better description and subsequent management of the factors other than fishing that impact the well-being of this and other species.
Again, jewfish is a good test case for the likely effectiveness of more holistic management. It is a species whose distribution spans many of the coastal environments, including estuaries, where the impacts of major stressors, such as pollution and inappropriate development, are most apparent. In view of the iconic standing of the species and the level of its plight, the necessary changes could constitute the beginning of a major shift in fisheries management in NSW.
In the light of growing concern that jewfish is not the only species in progressive decline, and for which recreational catches are beginning to dominate, a more general shift in fisheries management priorities is already appearing. A paradigm shift may be unavoidable.
Major changes in management will almost certainly force individual recreational fishers to reassess their fishing priorities. This reassessment will include, even if subconscious, review of how each fisher evaluates their own fishing activities. Which of the inputs to, and outputs and outcomes from, fishing do they value most (chapter 4)? Collectively fishers will need to blend these values into a package that will convince civil society that fishing is an activity that should be given high priority in the allocation of access to aquatic resources.
For fishing in the next decades to be better, it will be essential that recreational fishers assume significantly increased responsibility for the management of total marine ecosystems and the impacts of fishing on them. Better-informed debate among fishers, and between fishers and governments, on how to proceed appear logical first steps. The information that is needed to underpin these debates must be informed by increased definition of the recreational catch and other impacts of fishing. Fortunately, the need for a considerably improved contribution to management, including conservation, is being progressively accepted by recreational fishers, most importantly those in positions of influence on the advice to government on the management of fisheries. The commitment and contributions by these leaders have been impressive. It bodes well for the future. And they will get better at it as they get access to better data and experience positive responses from management to their inputs.
In the interests of the future of recreational fishing in NSW the jewfish problem must be fixed, and quickly. A prompt solution is necessary not only because jewfish is the iconic species for anglers and is popular with seafood consumers, but also because this is the most public test to date of recreational fishers’ collective commitment to sustainability and ecosystem protection. Failure here will quickly lead to more strident examination of other recreational fishing practices. Should jewfish populations continue to decline to the point that the species is classified as threatened or endangered the pressure to increase ‘marine protected areas’ that are closed to all fishing, not just for jewfish, may well become irresistible. Greater scrutiny of the impact of recreational fishing on the status of all species that are targeted, or incidentally caught, by anglers and for which the government’s assessments, or claims by selective advocacy groups, even suggest there might be problems will follow. There is already considerable concern for numerous other prominent species, including silver trevally, snapper, dusky flathead and probably any other species that aggressively takes a soft plastic, or other modern, lure.
Failure with jewfish will also increase greatly the difficulty for anglers to counter the rising challenges to recreational fishing practices that were, back in the good old days, simply not even considered to be on the horizon. Practices such as the use of live bait, plastic lures (throwing plastic deliberately into the mouths of fish), electric reels (considered by many to be more related to ‘meat gathering’ than sport by users other than those with disabilities), the wisdom of catch and release, and even the animal rights issues associated with all fishing, will be much harder to defend if the sector has a reputation that is tarnished by such a fundamental issue as the failure to protect the sustainability of stocks of the most iconic species.
Recreational fishers will also face increasing competition for the share of the total fisheries resources they enjoyed even a few decades ago. Through most of the last sixty years anglers regarded resource sharing as primarily a fight to be allocated a bigger slice of the fish pie that commercial fishers had been thought to dominate. The next sixty years will further expose the limitations of that assumption.
Allocation of fisheries resources is increasingly becoming far more complex. It progressively involves more than just allocation of catches. Access to locations where resources can be harvested, or displaced, is becoming more competitive. The type and number of habitat users will continue to increase. Non-extractive users of marine ecosystems, such as swimmers and surfboard riders, will play an increasing role in the conservation and use, and hence allocation of access to, an expanding array of marine environments.
Contrary to a popular misconception, many non-extractive uses of areas can have significant impact on fish populations. Some of these are positive, through support for conservation by restricting unmanaged extraction and habitat destruction and removing litter and other sources of pollution, but many are negative. High on the list in the negative category are those that create disturbances that damage habitats and/or displace selected species. This is most obvious when the wash from powerful boats damages banks or shallow habitats, or when fast-moving surface craft, such as kite-surfers, frighten and hence displace surface species of fish, such as garfish and other bait species. This is commonly compounded by serious noise pollution from high-powered craft, such as jet-skis.
Sixty years ago, anglers could fish virtually undisturbed almost everywhere they wished. Nowhere was this more obvious than on ocean beaches around Kingscliff. In 1960 anglers in four-wheel-drive vehicles were permitted free access to every beach in the region. By 2020 the limited access that remained for beach vehicles throughout NSW was largely restricted to permit only. The number of beaches closed to all powered vehicles continues to increase. Many recreational fishers, obviously those who do not have four-wheel-drives, often champion such restrictions. Allocation within the recreational fishing fraternity is an increasing issue. Freshwater fishers have been aware of issues with demarcation of areas for fly-fishing, lure-fishing and bait-fishing for decades.
Issues relating to resource allocation and access in marine environments will become far more prominent as human populations and individual affluence increase. Anglers collectively will need to hone their definition of the benefits fishing represents for civil society. They will also, unfortunately, need to fine-tune their lobbying skills. Anglers’ understanding of what their competitors for allocation will claim are the benefits of alternative activities must also be broadened.
One positive for the future of fisheries management is that the current plight of jewfish is bringing recreational and commercial fishers closer in their pursuit of an acceptable social licence to catch fish. Joint meetings of representatives of both groups are becoming increasingly effective.
After years of being accepted as the bad guys, commercial fishers are slowly but surely gaining acceptance, perhaps even the upper hand! As the word spreads that recreational fishing takes greater catches of a growing number of species, some NGOs, and other advocates with strong agendas for restricting all fishing, are shifting their priorities. Furthermore, the public is coming to appreciate that the country’s fisheries that are dominated by commercial fishing, are, in the main, well managed. This realisation, in combination with historical exposure of the problems that poorly managed fishing can cause, has catalysed increasing concern over Australia’s growing dependence on seafood that is imported. Australians are very attached to fresh local fish. They also have growing appreciation that much of the almost 80 per cent of the seafood they consume comes from countries that do not have Australia’s reputation for excellence in commercial fisheries management. The recently increased generic priority for environmental responsibility has heightened awareness that sustainability involves more than just sustainable ecosystems and fish populations: the sustainability of seafood supply to consumers, who constitute approximately 90 per cent of the Australian population, is assuming greater significance.
The case for commercial fishing as primarily a source of high-quality food is being further strengthened by modern food sciences. The health benefits of seafood have been acknowledged for decades. Consumption of fish has more recently been traced by archaeological and physiological research back to having been the catalyst in the evolution of the superior analytical capability, and the associated increase in size, of the human brain. This evolutionary benefit was first documented from the coastal areas of Africa and around the edges of Lake Victoria, mirroring the progressive development of reliable fishing technology. The relationship between fish consumption and brain development is confirmed by current medical advice on the particular benefits of seafood for pregnant women and children under three years of age.
Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council has been telling Australians for more than two decades to eat 40 per cent more fish. This endorsement for seafood based on its health benefits is reinforced by recent figures on the environmental responsibility of eating fish. Figures, published in the prestigious scientific journal Nature, show that the environmental footprint of producing fish from well-managed fisheries is less than one-thirtieth of that of producing red meat and, to the chagrin of many of the more strident vegans, it is less than a third of that of vegetables: no deliberate clearing of native habitats prior to planting, no herbicides, pesticides and fertilisers, no conscientious prevention of native species making a comeback and extremely little use of fresh water by fishers are among the responsible attributes. Acceptance that more than 90 per cent of the meat, fruit and vegetables cultivated in Australia are not only themselves introduced species but bring with them pests and diseases that can seriously damage local species, extending well beyond cultivated areas, also contributes to acceptance of the relative wisdom of eating local seafood.
Recreational fishers contemplating the future may find it beneficial to reconsider the strength of their sector’s historical opposition to commercial fishing. They may need to strengthen their own promotion of the benefits of consumption of Australian seafood. There would appear to be advantages in doing so by increased cooperation with the seafood industry. Recreational fishers may even need to review their more recent generic promotion of catch and release. Might it be wise to restrict it to situations where assumed conservation benefit is actually proven? Should the justification for sustainable catch be moved a little more towards sustainable consumption? Catch and release has been banned in several European countries that are major seafood consumers. Some First Nation Canadians regard salmon as sacred because of the importance of several species of salmon in their traditional diet and culture, and, because of the role of migrating salmon in transferring nutrients from the oceans to the upper reaches of rivers, in the general ecology of river systems. It is argued that it is noble to eat salmon because doing so honours them by providing you and your family with essential sustenance, but it is disrespectful to just torment them, only to let them go to be tormented again later!
Governments have correctly stressed the priority that must be given to addressing the threats that fishing might cause to marine ecosystems if it is not well managed. They have done so by giving environmental management the highest priority in the NSW Fisheries Management Act. The first three objectives of this Act mandate protection of species and ecosystems. Maintaining sustainable fisheries comes later. Little of Australia’s agricultural production could meet the conservation requirements of the NSW Fisheries Management Act. Efforts to manage the harvest of fish in the interests of environmental conservation have even been retitled in much current government documentation under the banner of ‘ecosystem-based fisheries management’. While such an objective is laudable, governments have not yet, however, effectively managed even the most obviously damaging of the non-fishing threats to ecosystems and the fish stocks they support.
Recreational fishers can hope that government actions will progress from pursuit of ‘ecosystem-based fisheries management’ to more holistic and balanced ecosystem-based protection, including effective management of all threats to marine ecosystems. Such total management logically must be underpinned by evidence-based identification and prioritisation of the key threats. The effectiveness of the recreational fishing lobby’s contribution to the pursuit of this goal will be influenced greatly by the evidence-based reputation of fishers as responsible custodians of the ecosystems they impact. The status of the stocks of the species they catch will be the obvious first benchmark.
Conservation of marine ecosystems is essential if recreational fishing is to be better in the next sixty years. Recreational fishers have an increasingly critical role to play in that conservation. Hopefully, this role will be progressively characterised by informed leadership. From the perspective of more direct self-interest of recreational fishers, equally essential will be public appreciation of the many wonderful benefits that can be derived from the wise and sustainable use of the resources that healthy marine ecosystems support.