Fishing power increases continue in Queensland's east coast trawl fishery, Australia

Abstract

The Queensland east coast trawl fishery is by far the largest prawn and scallop otter trawl fleet in Australia in terms of number of vessels, with 504 vessels licensed to fish for species including tiger prawns, endeavour prawns, red spot king prawns, eastern king prawns and saucer scallops by the end of 2004. The vessel fleet has gradually upgraded characteristics such as engine power and use of propeller nozzles, quad nets, global positioning systems (GPS) and computer mapping software. These changes, together with the ever-changing profile of the fleet, were analysed by linear mixed models to quantify annual efficiency increases of an average vessel at catching prawns or scallops. The analyses included vessel characteristics (treated as fixed effects) and vessel identifier codes (treated as random effects). For the period from 1989 to 2004 the models estimated overall fishing power increases of 6% in the northern tiger, 6% in the northern endeavour, 12% in the southern tiger, 18% in the red spot king, 46% in the eastern king prawn and 15% in the saucer scallop sector. The results illustrate the importance of ongoing monitoring of vessel and fleet characteristics and the need to use this information to standardise catch rate indices used in stock assessment and management. Crown

Do boat licences have a role in fisheries managed through individual quotas? Experience in Australian fisheries

“…see [32]). These increases are not limited to the NPF as similar efficiency increases have been observed in the adjacent Queensland east coast prawn fishery [33].…”

Quantifying long-term discards from Queensland’s (Australia) east Coast otter trawl fishery

“…Several studies have shown that fishing power in the QECOTF sectors has increased by 0.4-3.6% annually (O'Neill et al, 2003;O'Neill and Leigh, 2007;Braccini et al, 2012;Kienzle et al, 2014). All of these studies modelled logbook daily target species catch as a function of vessel characteristics, including vessel length, engine horse power, trawl speed, propeller size, global positioning system, net head rope length, BRDs, and other gears.…”

On the Need to Study Fishing Power Change: Challenges and Perspectives

“…See, for example, Gascuel et al (1993) on fishing power in eastern Atlantic tuna fisheries; Holst et al (2002) on cod gill netters in the Baltic; Damalas et al (2014) on Greek demersal trawlers; O'Neill et al (2003) and O'Neill and Leigh (2007) on demersal trawlers off Queensland, Australia; Kimura (1981) on ocean perch trawlers in the north-east Pacific; Brown et al (1995) on the Western Australian rock lobster fishery; and Robichaud et al (1999) on coral reef fish traps in the Caribbean.…”