Moonlighter
11-07-2008, 10:14 PM
Murray-Darling first - how about Moreton Bay next?!
The Moreton Bay Seafood Industry Association, who continue to work closely with marine industries and us rec fishers on the Moreton Bay Marine Park rezoning, tells me they are well down the path of the process towards a recognised sustainable fishery as achieved in the Murray-Darling as reported below.
Do you reckon that there would be support for rec working together with the pro's from MBSIA to take that forward?
Murray-Darling community fishery thriving and sustainable
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 07/07/2008
Reporter: Mike Sexton
The lack of flow into the Murray River is having a devastating effect on irrigation industries in South Australia, but one group from the region has overcome the odds and is thriving. A community based fishery in the area has been recognised as Australia's first sustainable fishery.
Transcript
ALI MOORE, PRESENTER: Over the weekend Prime Minister Kevin Rudd paid a visit to the receding shores of the lower lakes in South Australia, to see first hand the damage being done by a lack of water in the Murray River.
Mr Rudd reiterated his belief that saving the lakes and Coorong from an ecological disaster depends on a restructuring of the entire Murray-Darling basin.
The shortage of water has had a devastating effect on irrigation industries in the region, but against the odds there is one group that's thriving.
The fishermen, whose families have worked the waterways for more than a century, have become the first community-based fishery in Australia to be internationally recognised as sustainable.
Mike Sexton reports.
MIKE SEXTON, REPORTER: At first light, while bracing a freezing southerly, Garry Hera-Singh is hauling in a catch of Coorong mullet. It's a craft he learnt from his father and grandfathers.
GARRY HERA-SINGH, SOUTHERN FISHERMEN'S ASSOCIATION: I don't know how old I was, it was before I could walk. I can just have very faint memories of being out in the wind and the cold and rain.
MIKE SEXTON: The Hera-Singh's have fished the waters of this rugged, beautiful wilderness for so long, they are as much a part of it as the pelicans that follow their work.
For more than a century fishermen have worked the Lower lakes and Coorong, the fertile estuary where the River Murray flows into the sea. Over the generations there have been very few changes, although now the wooden row boats are tinnies and the cotton nets have been replaced with nylon.
GARRY HERA-SINGH: Unlike in the old days where they used to just covered them up with hessian bags or a bit of seaweed we will just use ice and ice the fish down. So there's not a lot changed.
MIKE SEXTON: In addition to the Coorong, Garry Hera-Singh fishes the turbulent Southern Ocean using a technique developed here called "swing netting." The net is taken out to sea using the natural rips around the Murray Mouth, and once set, is controlled from the beach.
GARRY HERA-SINGH: Now I am trying to keep the tension on the rope to keep the net nice and straight in the water.
MIKE SEXTON: In addition to the pounding surf, there is always the danger of meeting shark, but on a good day it yields 25 kilogram mulloway.
GARRY HERA-SINGH: I am running about a ten inch net and that targets fish about that size (approximately one metre long).
MIKE SEXTON: A few kilometres inland, Henry Jones fishes the freshwater lakes.
HENRY JONES, SOUTHERN FISHERMEN'S ASSOCIATION: I learnt an enormous amount from my grandfather and every school holiday I would be up there with him.
MIKE SEXTON: He catches introduced species like redfin and carp as well as natives like golden perch.
HENRY JONES: The fish I catch for a living, they're going alright, they're going really well. We put lots of restrictions on ourselves, many years ago, to make sure the fishing is sustainable. For instance, golden perch, they spawn at about 23cm. Now 33cm is the minimum, so there is a big area there to spawn before we start catching them.
MIKE SEXTON: Although those fishing the Coorong and Lower Lakes follow time honoured traditions, more than a decade ago Henry Jones believed they needed to formalise their environmental principles to maintain their livelihoods.
HENRY JONES: We called a meeting and we invited all the fishermen. And I was going to ask them to be greenies, and fishermen are fairly tough characters, and I was sort of worried about what was going to happen, but every one of them put their hand up and said this is the way we want to go.
MIKE SEXTON: The families drew up a management plan based on their accumulated knowledge and by reducing the number of licenses, targeting certain species, and seasonally rotating their catches, convinced themselves - if no one else - they were sustainable.
GARRY HERA-SINGH: The fishermen have known for decades they have a sustainable fishery but the people who live in the big cities have no idea unless it is written on a computer screen or in a book, we are not going to win the battle to convince these people.
MIKE SEXTON: The fishing community eventually decided to go beyond self-regulation and apply for the highest environmental assessment, a Marine Stewardship Council Certification.
To do so, they opened themselves up to international independent scrutiny, and after almost 10 years of intense documentation they recently celebrated becoming the first community-based fishery in Australia and only the 27th in the world to be certified.
DUNCAN LEADBITTER, MARINE STEWARDSHIP COUNCIL: This is a very rigorous process. All aspects of the fishery in terms of its catches and environmental performance and management systems are put through a very detailed audit process and that's a very public and transparent process, and so the auditors are looking at everything.
MIKE SEXTON: The certification is already paying dividends, with leading restaurants seeking out Coorong mullet and other species with the green tick. Any economic success is welcome in a community where the drought and over allocation of the River Murray has left the freshwater lakes in crisis.
ROGER STROTHER, MAYOR, COORONG COUNCIL: The farming side of it, particularly the dairy and irrigation side here, they are really struggling, they are finding it really hard. Whereas the fishing industry side are still doing very well because they are managing their fishing industry so well.
MIKE SEXTON: But despite the Southern Fishermens Association commitment to their workplace, the big picture is out of their hands. After years without river flows the Coorong is no longer an estuarine system where fresh and salt water mix.
HENRY JONES: Two thirds of the Coorong has died. It used to be the main area for flounder, mullet, black brim for breeding and all those non consumptive species, these little blokes who feed all the migratory birds and all the other birds, that used to be where they fished but now it's dead. Now it's the same salt consistency as the Dead Sea.
KEVIN RUDD, PRIME MINISTER: What has stunned me is the extent to which this shoreline has moved from there to there in the space of a year.
MIKE SEXTON: When the Prime Minister visited the Lakes on the weekend he confirmed there is no short term fix, and that the only hope lies in long term restructuring.
KEVIN RUDD: It's the management of this entire system, this massive Murray Darling system, from Queensland where I come from, through NSW across Victoria and to here, and unless we manage this river system better in the long term, then what we do in terms of shorter term measures will not help.
HENRY JONES: I think irrigators maybe could learn quite a bit from us that and say that if you are not sustainable then everything is going to die. And I really think they could take a lesson out of our book.
MIKE SEXTON: Tomorrow Garry Hera-Singh will again battle the elements to catch fish. His young son wants to learn the craft and he's determined to give him the opportunity.
GARRY HERA-SINGH: It's really simple. The environment is what produces the fish if we look after the environment, the fish will do the rest for you.
ALI MOORE: That report from Mike Sexton.
The Moreton Bay Seafood Industry Association, who continue to work closely with marine industries and us rec fishers on the Moreton Bay Marine Park rezoning, tells me they are well down the path of the process towards a recognised sustainable fishery as achieved in the Murray-Darling as reported below.
Do you reckon that there would be support for rec working together with the pro's from MBSIA to take that forward?
Murray-Darling community fishery thriving and sustainable
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
Broadcast: 07/07/2008
Reporter: Mike Sexton
The lack of flow into the Murray River is having a devastating effect on irrigation industries in South Australia, but one group from the region has overcome the odds and is thriving. A community based fishery in the area has been recognised as Australia's first sustainable fishery.
Transcript
ALI MOORE, PRESENTER: Over the weekend Prime Minister Kevin Rudd paid a visit to the receding shores of the lower lakes in South Australia, to see first hand the damage being done by a lack of water in the Murray River.
Mr Rudd reiterated his belief that saving the lakes and Coorong from an ecological disaster depends on a restructuring of the entire Murray-Darling basin.
The shortage of water has had a devastating effect on irrigation industries in the region, but against the odds there is one group that's thriving.
The fishermen, whose families have worked the waterways for more than a century, have become the first community-based fishery in Australia to be internationally recognised as sustainable.
Mike Sexton reports.
MIKE SEXTON, REPORTER: At first light, while bracing a freezing southerly, Garry Hera-Singh is hauling in a catch of Coorong mullet. It's a craft he learnt from his father and grandfathers.
GARRY HERA-SINGH, SOUTHERN FISHERMEN'S ASSOCIATION: I don't know how old I was, it was before I could walk. I can just have very faint memories of being out in the wind and the cold and rain.
MIKE SEXTON: The Hera-Singh's have fished the waters of this rugged, beautiful wilderness for so long, they are as much a part of it as the pelicans that follow their work.
For more than a century fishermen have worked the Lower lakes and Coorong, the fertile estuary where the River Murray flows into the sea. Over the generations there have been very few changes, although now the wooden row boats are tinnies and the cotton nets have been replaced with nylon.
GARRY HERA-SINGH: Unlike in the old days where they used to just covered them up with hessian bags or a bit of seaweed we will just use ice and ice the fish down. So there's not a lot changed.
MIKE SEXTON: In addition to the Coorong, Garry Hera-Singh fishes the turbulent Southern Ocean using a technique developed here called "swing netting." The net is taken out to sea using the natural rips around the Murray Mouth, and once set, is controlled from the beach.
GARRY HERA-SINGH: Now I am trying to keep the tension on the rope to keep the net nice and straight in the water.
MIKE SEXTON: In addition to the pounding surf, there is always the danger of meeting shark, but on a good day it yields 25 kilogram mulloway.
GARRY HERA-SINGH: I am running about a ten inch net and that targets fish about that size (approximately one metre long).
MIKE SEXTON: A few kilometres inland, Henry Jones fishes the freshwater lakes.
HENRY JONES, SOUTHERN FISHERMEN'S ASSOCIATION: I learnt an enormous amount from my grandfather and every school holiday I would be up there with him.
MIKE SEXTON: He catches introduced species like redfin and carp as well as natives like golden perch.
HENRY JONES: The fish I catch for a living, they're going alright, they're going really well. We put lots of restrictions on ourselves, many years ago, to make sure the fishing is sustainable. For instance, golden perch, they spawn at about 23cm. Now 33cm is the minimum, so there is a big area there to spawn before we start catching them.
MIKE SEXTON: Although those fishing the Coorong and Lower Lakes follow time honoured traditions, more than a decade ago Henry Jones believed they needed to formalise their environmental principles to maintain their livelihoods.
HENRY JONES: We called a meeting and we invited all the fishermen. And I was going to ask them to be greenies, and fishermen are fairly tough characters, and I was sort of worried about what was going to happen, but every one of them put their hand up and said this is the way we want to go.
MIKE SEXTON: The families drew up a management plan based on their accumulated knowledge and by reducing the number of licenses, targeting certain species, and seasonally rotating their catches, convinced themselves - if no one else - they were sustainable.
GARRY HERA-SINGH: The fishermen have known for decades they have a sustainable fishery but the people who live in the big cities have no idea unless it is written on a computer screen or in a book, we are not going to win the battle to convince these people.
MIKE SEXTON: The fishing community eventually decided to go beyond self-regulation and apply for the highest environmental assessment, a Marine Stewardship Council Certification.
To do so, they opened themselves up to international independent scrutiny, and after almost 10 years of intense documentation they recently celebrated becoming the first community-based fishery in Australia and only the 27th in the world to be certified.
DUNCAN LEADBITTER, MARINE STEWARDSHIP COUNCIL: This is a very rigorous process. All aspects of the fishery in terms of its catches and environmental performance and management systems are put through a very detailed audit process and that's a very public and transparent process, and so the auditors are looking at everything.
MIKE SEXTON: The certification is already paying dividends, with leading restaurants seeking out Coorong mullet and other species with the green tick. Any economic success is welcome in a community where the drought and over allocation of the River Murray has left the freshwater lakes in crisis.
ROGER STROTHER, MAYOR, COORONG COUNCIL: The farming side of it, particularly the dairy and irrigation side here, they are really struggling, they are finding it really hard. Whereas the fishing industry side are still doing very well because they are managing their fishing industry so well.
MIKE SEXTON: But despite the Southern Fishermens Association commitment to their workplace, the big picture is out of their hands. After years without river flows the Coorong is no longer an estuarine system where fresh and salt water mix.
HENRY JONES: Two thirds of the Coorong has died. It used to be the main area for flounder, mullet, black brim for breeding and all those non consumptive species, these little blokes who feed all the migratory birds and all the other birds, that used to be where they fished but now it's dead. Now it's the same salt consistency as the Dead Sea.
KEVIN RUDD, PRIME MINISTER: What has stunned me is the extent to which this shoreline has moved from there to there in the space of a year.
MIKE SEXTON: When the Prime Minister visited the Lakes on the weekend he confirmed there is no short term fix, and that the only hope lies in long term restructuring.
KEVIN RUDD: It's the management of this entire system, this massive Murray Darling system, from Queensland where I come from, through NSW across Victoria and to here, and unless we manage this river system better in the long term, then what we do in terms of shorter term measures will not help.
HENRY JONES: I think irrigators maybe could learn quite a bit from us that and say that if you are not sustainable then everything is going to die. And I really think they could take a lesson out of our book.
MIKE SEXTON: Tomorrow Garry Hera-Singh will again battle the elements to catch fish. His young son wants to learn the craft and he's determined to give him the opportunity.
GARRY HERA-SINGH: It's really simple. The environment is what produces the fish if we look after the environment, the fish will do the rest for you.
ALI MOORE: That report from Mike Sexton.