Mud Crab Fishery
The mud crab fishery, particularly on the east coast of Queensland, is a powder-keg waiting to explode. Interestingly though, this is not so much because of concerns about sustainability of the fishery, but because of conflict within and between user groups.
It would appear that the long held rule of only taking male crabs in Queensland, is working as far as sustaining the stocks goes.Periodically vested interests try to change this long standing constraint, but so far they have been unsuccessful - long may it remain. If it ain't obviously broken, don't fix it seems the way to go here.
But pot and crab theft is rife in this state and is the cause of ongoing conflict in communities the length of the coast.
The blame can't be sheeted back to any one sector, because it is occurring across both the recreational and commercial sectors. A cure is not immediately apparent unfortunately. This fishery has supposedly been under review now for almost a decade without any real progress. Everyone is getting frustated by the lack of action and the lack of on-water enforcement presence due to resourcing cuts isn't helping either.
Like the inshore net fishery, there is a clear over-capacity in the commercial fishing ranks. There remain somewhere around 500 crabbing licences on the east coast. Blind Freddy can figure out that that's just way too many. One reason the go-nowhere management review of the crab fishery remains stalled, is that the managers have no real idea how to go about reducing the number of commercial crab licences out there.
Once again it all comes back to dollars to buy large numbers of operators out of the industry. Solve that problem and you will go a long way towards solving most of the other issues in this fishery.
It would appear that the long held rule of only taking male crabs in Queensland, is working as far as sustaining the stocks goes.Periodically vested interests try to change this long standing constraint, but so far they have been unsuccessful - long may it remain. If it ain't obviously broken, don't fix it seems the way to go here.
But pot and crab theft is rife in this state and is the cause of ongoing conflict in communities the length of the coast.
The blame can't be sheeted back to any one sector, because it is occurring across both the recreational and commercial sectors. A cure is not immediately apparent unfortunately. This fishery has supposedly been under review now for almost a decade without any real progress. Everyone is getting frustated by the lack of action and the lack of on-water enforcement presence due to resourcing cuts isn't helping either.
Like the inshore net fishery, there is a clear over-capacity in the commercial fishing ranks. There remain somewhere around 500 crabbing licences on the east coast. Blind Freddy can figure out that that's just way too many. One reason the go-nowhere management review of the crab fishery remains stalled, is that the managers have no real idea how to go about reducing the number of commercial crab licences out there.
Once again it all comes back to dollars to buy large numbers of operators out of the industry. Solve that problem and you will go a long way towards solving most of the other issues in this fishery.
