Alarm bells have rung for Australia’s Commonwealth-managed fisheries as overfishing has increased for the second year running and threatened species have been pushed further towards extinction, said the Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS) after the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics and Sciences (ABARES) released its annual assessment of Commonwealth fish stocks yesterday.
The new data shows the Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) is failing to effectively manage fishing quotas and protect endangered species, despite tens of millions of dollars in taxpayer bailouts aimed at ending overfishing over the past two decades.
AMCS Sustainable Seafood Program Manager Adrian Meder said, ‘This report shows evidence that AFMA has been deliberately setting annual catches at up to double what their own scientific advice recommends, allowing already overfished populations to be further depleted. They are even doing this for endangered fish species like school shark, blue warehou and orange roughy despite these species having explicit recovery obligations.
‘There are now seven fish stocks that are being overfished, the highest number since 2011 and one more than was in last year’s report. This means 34 per cent of Commonwealth-managed stocks remain overfished or uncertain.
‘Australia’s environment laws include a special threatened species classification just for fish called “Conservation Dependent”, where endangered species can still be caught and sold by commercial fishers, and are not subject to other protections given to other threatened species. They can be caught and sold under the proviso that the species is a focus of a management plan.
‘While AFMA is supposed to be tasked with rebuilding these endangered species populations, they have allowed several such species, including school shark, blue warehou, and orange roughy, to be pushed further toward extinction. Catch levels have been regularly set by AFMA higher than their own scientific evidence recommends, in order to increase short-term profits.’
Scientific catch limits exceeded
The Australian Marine Conservation Society says that for the past three fishing years, AFMA has allowed endangered school sharks to be caught at levels that result in the total numbers killed, overshooting scientifically recommended limits by 14-18 per cent.
For the current 2024-25 season, AFMA has set catch limits 19 tons higher than the scientific recommendation of 178 tons.
AMCS shark scientist Dr Leonardo Guida said, ‘Total school shark deaths from fishing have exceeded scientifically recommended limits since 2021. This compromises any hope of the endangered shark’s recovery, and yet minutes from AFMA’s own meetings reveal they explicitly allow above scientifically-recommended catch limits to favour short-term profits.’
Adrian Meder said, ‘The report also finds AFMA is not adequately addressing fish dumping with some discard estimates far exceeding take home catch in overfished species. An estimated 90 per cent of endangered blue warehou caught in the Commonwealth Trawl Fishery, Australia’s largest trawl fishery, is thrown back to the ocean.
‘AFMA has failed to ensure reliable estimates of fish discarding can even be estimated at all for some stocks. Fish dumping rates of silver trevally in Southern and Eastern Scalefish and Shark Fishery haven’t been reliably estimated since 2015. It is clear that increased independent scrutiny is desperately needed in this fishery.
‘Without a clear picture of what is being caught, and how much of that is thrown back in the sea dead, there is no way to sustainably manage a fishery.’
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
