Permanent demersal fishing ban begins for parts of Western Australia Coast

ABC NEWS (Australia)

Commercial fishers are no longer able to catch demersal fish along a nine-hundred-kilometer stretch of Western Australia’s South Coast. The WA government ban aims to shore up numbers of species that are at-risk, but critics say it has been poorly handled.

Transcript

00:00For more than 55 years commercial fisherman Nicholas Sulos has operated out of Bunbury, but no more.

00:10It's like waking up on the 1st of January and saying our career, our business is finished, never to come back again.

00:19The state government has committed $20 million to a commercial licence buyout scheme, but fishers say it isn't enough.

00:26I've got two crew that came to us as teenagers and they're now in their early 50s.

00:32It's the only skill that they know. The government's not interested in retraining them.

00:36The impact reverberating across the industry.

00:39We think about between 30 and 50 percent will be the drop in bait sales.

00:44A lot of that will be, as I said, the imported products and the sardines we do.

00:50Recreational fishing from boats for demersal species between Kalbarri and Augusta

00:55has been banned until spring 2027.

00:59The closure announced by Minister Jarvis will likely have absolutely no effect on population recovery for species like geofish.

01:0918 months is far too short a period of time.

01:13These decisions are never easy. They're tough and people are upset.

01:17But this is the right thing to do to sustain the industry and to sustain recreational fisheries,

01:23fishing in Western Australia for the long term.

01:26Reduced commercial catch limits also come into effect today in other parts of the state.

01:31The state government says the bans will ensure fish for future generations.

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