Energy use of fishing vessels operating in Tasmania

This paper investigated the fuel consumption of fishing vessels operating within the southern rock-lobster fishery and the south-eastern shark and scalefish fishery in Tasmanian waters. This was undertaken by sending a questionnaire to operators surveying different vessels and estimating the vessels’ efficiency. The estimated yearly efficiency was checked using a one sided t-test and a 95% confidence interval. Using this efficiency the fuel consumption for the 2011 calendar year for southern rock-lobster and SESSF long-line vessels was estimated to be between 1.12 to 1.6 ML and between 0.70 to 0.80 ML respectively. To reduce this fuel consumption, different engineering solutions such as removal of bilge keels, service speed reduction and addition of bulbous bow were investigated, and it was found that vessels could reduce their fuel consumption by 5 to 20%.