Decline and partial recovery of a trawl fishery in South-eastern Australia

This chapter describes the management history of a complex multispecies trawl fishery in south eastern Australia, particularly over the past three decades. Substantial declines in stock status and economic performance of the fishery in the early 2000s resulted in several initiatives to deal with this situation, including the development of a strategic evaluation of the overall management arrangements for the fishery, the introduction of a formal harvest strategy framework to address overfishing, and the buyout of half the fishing fleet in the mid-2000s. Although a few overfished stocks have so far failed to recover, overfishing (fishing mortality rates above FMSY) has ceased and the fishery has returned to positive profitability. Broader improvements in environmental performance have also been achieved, particularly in managing impacts of fishing on protected species and benthic habitat. This case study illustrates the complexities of recovery in multispecies fisheries, and the combination of political, scientific and management efforts needed to move towards recovery.