The threat to Australia’s oceans from supertrawlers ©Australian Marine Conservation Society, May 2019 Australian Marine Conservation Society Phone: +61 (07) 3846 6777 Freecall: 1800 066 299 Email: [email protected] PO Box 5815 West End QLD 4101 Author: Chris Smyth Design: iannellodesign.com.au Photos: ©Photographer/Greenpeace, except for back cover, which is ©James Sherwood/Bluebottle Films. Cover: The 126-metre supertrawler, Afrika, fishing off the coast of Mauritania. Photo: ©Pierre Gleizes/Greenpeace. Acknowledgements AMCS, SOML and the author wish to thank Greenpeace for providing the photographs for this report, and Quentin Hanich for reviewing the text. This report has been prepared for the exclusive use of the Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS) and Save Our Marine Life (SOML). The report must only be used by AMCS and SOML, or with the explicit permission of AMCS and SOML. The matters covered in the report are those agreed to between AMCS, SOML and the author. The report does not purport to consider exhaustively all of the issues associated with the entry of foreign fishing boats into the Australian Fishing Zone. The author does not accept liability for any loss or damage, including without limitation, compensatory, direct, indirect, or consequential damages and claims of third parties that may be caused directly or indirectly through the use of, reliance upon or interpretation of the contents of the report. CONTENTS Executive summary 2 1. Introduction 6 2. Fish populations at risk 8 3. Big boats 14 4. Impacts of pelagic fishing 18 5. The threat of more big boats 24 6. Testing the waters 30 7. Transhipping 36 8. Australian trawl 42 9. Conclusions and recommendations 47 Endnotes 50 List of Abbreviations 54 The threat to Australia’s oceans from supertrawlers 1 Executive Summary Since the 1950s industrial-scale factory fishing fleets The research has also found that there have been have roamed the world’s oceans looking for fish, moves for at least the last two years to bring other spurred on by demand, government subsidies and foreign fishing vessels into Australian waters. Australia’s advances in technology. Overfishing, illegal fishing, fishing fleet is relatively small, with limited capital and decimated local coastal economies and illegal high operating costs given the vastness and limited activities have followed in their wake. productivity of our oceans. Ready-to-go foreign fishing vessels with far greater capacity appear to be an In the early 1980s Australia took control of its waters, attractive option for significantly increasing catch in limiting access by foreign fishing fleets that had Australian waters. This report details what is known to been exploiting Australia’s fish stocks including tuna this point including new information that has come to and prawn for decades. Access thereafter was via light as a result of questioning in the Federal Parliament agreement only. There was a lot at stake – Australian and background research. At the time of going to waters are particularly vulnerable to overfishing due print, a Freedom of Information (FOI) request lodged to their low biological productivity and the difficulty in with the Federal Government earlier this year remains detection over such remote and vast areas. outstanding. Regulator transparency is limited in this In the following decades Australia was able to develop area. a reputation for being one of the better managed Even with the limited information available, this report fishing nations. The contrast between fishing intensity has found that there is both motive and opportunity inside and outside Australia’s waters is stark. Fishing – there is a push for increased commercial fishing fleets on the high seas operate right up to Australia’s effort in Australian waters, the industrial capacity found borders (see Figure 1, opposite). in foreign fishing fleets is necessary to achieve this It is becoming apparent that Australia’s reputation aim, and Australia’s legal loopholes and regulatory is increasingly a beacon drawing in the industrial opaqueness make this possible. fishing capacity that has depleted oceans elsewhere. Further, this report finds that the prospect of industrial- The unprecedented approval for two European scale foreign fishing vessels becoming established supertrawlers (industrial fishing boats that catch, in Australian waters poses an unacceptable risk to process, freeze and store on a grand scale) to fish in Australia’s unique and diverse marine life, its fishing Australian waters in recent years – the Margiris and the sustainability, its recreational fishing lifestyle and Dirk Dirk – is an indicator of this. associated tourism ventures, its ability to uphold The Australian public roundly rejected the notion of human rights and environmental safeguards, and its supertrawlers operating in our fisheries, but weak international reputation. domestic regulation allows them to slip through into This report makes two key recommendations – that Australian waters. The two supertrawlers that have a formal independent inquiry is now needed to received regulatory approval to operate in Australian investigate moves to bring foreign fishing vessels into waters were hounded out by local communities. Australian waters, and that the Federal Government In response to high levels of concern, the federal must make good on its claim that supertrawlers are government put in place a permanent ban on banned in Australia’s vulnerable fisheries. supertrawlers in Australian waters, but the research has found this to be ‘tip of the iceberg regulation’ – banning only a tiny subset (just six) of the world’s supertrawler fleet. 2 Australian Fishing Zone Figure 1. Fishing vessel movements within and adjacent to the Australian Fishing Zone (AFZ), from March to September 2018. Note the stark contrast between activity within and outside Australian waters right up to the AFZ boundary. Pressure is mounting for foreign fishing fleets to operate in Australian waters. Source: Global Fishing Watch, <https://globalfishingwatch.org/map/>.2. Findings 1. With the decline of fish stocks elsewhere, 3. The use of foreign fishing vessels in Australian owners of large foreign fishing vessels are waters is rare and allowed only in certain increasingly interested in gaining access to circumstances, but there is mounting pressure Australian waters. Fishing regulators and some for this to change. In the past 15 years there have sectors of the Australian commercial fishing been three known attempts to bring industrial- industry consider Australia’s fish stocks to be scale factory fishing supertrawlers into Australian under-utilised and seek to expand their capacity waters to operate in the Small Pelagic Fishery in order to significantly increase catch. (SPF) (covering the southern half of Australia’s 2. Australian waters are particularly vulnerable oceans) – the Veronica, the Margiris (aka Abel to overfishing by global standards, with low Tasman) and Dirk Dirk (aka Geelong Star). biological productivity due to low nutrient 4. Claims of economic benefit from the increase levels. Recent peer-reviewed analysis based in efficiency that foreign vessels would bring on long-term monitoring of fish populations has to Australian fisheries are questionable. Expert challenged the approach by the federal fisheries evidence to a Senate Inquiry found that their regulator to setting total allowable catch in use could lead to the concentration of fisheries commercial fisheries. operations in the hands of a very few operators, who are likely to be foreign nationals, with income flowing out of the country and resultant job losses. Further, the need for greater regulation in an array of areas would significantly increase the impost on the taxpayer. The threat to Australia’s oceans from supertrawlers 3 5. Australia’s coastal economies could suffer 9. The potential for industrial scale factory fishing economic impacts from the loss of recreational vessels to operate in Australian waters extends fishing and tourism opportunity as a result of, beyond supertrawlers. Large longline and for instance, increased competition for prized super-seiner fishing vessels with freezing and fish stocks such as southern bluefin tuna, and storage facilities which target tuna in particular the removal of large amounts of baitfish species also play a significant role in overfishing globally, that are food for recreationally targeted species as well as large carrier vessels that take on board including sharks, tuna, billfish, Spanish mackerel, the catches of smaller fishing boats. A range of wahoo and mahi. Australian fisheries are therefore at risk from their entry. 6. Long experience overseas indicates that establishing foreign fishing fleets in Australian 10. Some Australian tuna longliners have recently waters may be contrary to the national interest. indicated interest in the use of foreign fishing Overfishing, illegal fishing and crime are rife on vessels and their foreign crews for transhipping vessels in some foreign fleets where the use operations that would negate the need for of flags of convenience and ports that do not Australian ports to process catches. Elsewhere record catch is common. The socioeconomic around the world, research has shown that conditions generated by overfishing can make transhipment has led to the growth of illegal fishing communities vulnerable to recruitment fishing and overfishing, often allowing fishing into criminal activities and, in some instances, vessels to avoid port visits,