6. FISHERY MANAGEMENT REGULATIONS
6.1 The regulations
Responsibility for management of the SSF is currently shared by the Commonwealth Government and the State Governments of Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia, but steps are being taken to bring the fishery under a single jurisdiction (i.e. Commonwealth jurisidiction with the exception of ‘State internal waters’ which will remain under State jurisdiction). State jurisdiction extends 3 miles from the coastline and Commonwealth jurisdiction extends from the 3-mile zone to the 200 mile limit of the Australian Fishing Zone.
These arrangements have meant that in the past the fishery has been regulated and continues to be regulated under the jurisdictions of the Commonwealth and the three States. Hence current arrangements for vessel registration, fisher licences, special limited entry licences/permits, fishery regulations and the taking of sharks or use of shark fishing gear under research permit are extremely complex. Commonwealth regulations are proclaimed and licences/permits are administered under the Commonwealth Fisheries Management Act 1991 while State regulations are proclaimed and licences are administered under the State fisheries Acts of Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia.
A number of biological regulations are either currently in place or have been adopted and subsequently abandoned. Details of these regulations for legal minimum lengths, legal maximum lengths, legal minimum and maximum mesh-sizes of gillnets, closed seasons and closed areas are given in Section 4.2. Details of effort controls on number of vessels and gear holdings are given in Section 4.1.2.
6.2 Regulations and the communication process
Gazetting of proclamation, rescission, or amendment of regulations in Government Public Notices, is standard practice by Commonwealth and State fisheries agencies involved in management of the SSF. These agencies also publish these changes in their periodical magazines and often advise licence holders directly in writing. The flow of information is also facilitated by the presence of fisheries enforcement officers based in regional offices.
7. THE LAW AND ENFORCEMENT
7.1 Legal status
7.1.1 Historical perspective
Consultation and coordination of management of the SSF has been effected through the former Australian Fisheries Council (now the Ministerial Council on Forests, Fisheries and Aquaculture). The then Australian Fisheries Council, which comprised Commonwealth and State Ministers with responsibilities for fisheries, was the most senior advisory body to Governments. The Standing Committee on Fisheries (now Standing Committee on Fisheries and Aquaculture) comprised administrative heads of fisheries agencies and reported to the Australian Fisheries Council. Management and stock assessment advice was provided to the Australian Fisheries Council through the Standing Committee on Fisheries initially by the Southern Pelagic Project Committee but later by the South Eastern Fisheries Committee. The South Eastern Fisheries Committee established the Southern Shark Research Group as a sub-committee to advise on stock assessment and shark biology issues as well as to provide a forum for coordination of fishery research and monitoring. Legal minimum lengths, legal minimum mesh-sizes, closed areas and closed seasons were achieved by these bodies through Commonwealth and State legislation, but they never achieved limited entry or controls on gear holdings or catch.
Concern about overfishing the shark stocks led to the establishment of a temporary task force in July 1984 by the former Australian Fisheries Council to address shark fishery management issues. The Southern Shark Task Force, which was subsequently replaced by the Southern Shark Management Advisory Committee (SharkMAC), comprised representatives from the fisheries agencies of the Commonwealth, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia and from the shark fishing industry in each of Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia. Following the first meeting of the Task Force in September 1984, the Commonwealth began endorsing Commonwealth Fishing Boat Licences (subsequently replaced with Commonwealth Fishing Permits) with ‘shark gillnet endorsements’ which allowed an operator to use a vessel to take shark with gillnets of mesh-size exceeding 150 mm in Commonwealth waters. Later, in April 1988, the use of gillnets in the prescribed area of the SSF was controlled by the Southern Shark Fishery Management Plan established under the Fisheries Act 1952 (now replaced). The objective of this plan was to reduce the fishing mortality of sharks to provide for sustainable catches through reduction of gillnet fishing effort. This reduction of effort was implemented by controlling the number, size and construction of gillnets, and the number operators who were permitted to use them.
7.1.2 Current arrangements
Management boundaries for the fishery are defined as extending from the New South Wales-Victoria border to the South Australia-Western Australia border, including waters around Tasmania. Although the fishery continues to be managed under the four separate jurisdictions of the Commonwealth, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia, the State fisheries agencies and the AFMA have agreed to apply complementary management arrangements in the areas under their jurisdictions.
To simplify management arrangements the Commonwealth and State Ministers responsible for fisheries in Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia have agreed to enter into an OCS agreement which will place the majority of the fishery under a single jurisdiction. The Ministers have agreed that the fishery be managed under Commonwealth law by a Joint Authority comprising the three States and the Commonwealth. AFMA will undertake day-to-day management functions on the behalf of the Joint Authority under these arrangements. The jurisdictional arrangements to be incorporated into the OCS agreement and a Memorandum of Understanding between the Commonwealth and States are close to finalization (Anon 1998a).
While the New South Wales-Victoria border and South Australia-Western Australia border are the management boundaries of the fishery, the range of the species includes both Western Australia and New South Wales. In both Commonwealth and State waters off New South Wales, gillnetting is currently banned. In waters off Western Australia, shark fishing is controlled through a Joint Authority between the Commonwealth and Western Australian Governments under a separate OCS agreement.
With these arrangements, the shark fishery is a Commonwealth managed fishery. Ultimate responsibility for Commonwealth fisheries is held by the Minister for Resources and Energy, but the Australian Fisheries Management Authority—a statutory authority—holds immediate responsibility for fisheries management and is held accountable to the Parliament to justify its performance against statutory objectives. AFMA is not composed of representatives of the fishing industry, but instead is controlled by a board on the basis of expertise and is appointed by the Minister (Anon 1989).
7.2 Enforcement problems
The SSF does not currently have enforcement problems. However, because shark catches can be marketed through a large range of outlets, enforcement of the legal maximum length during 1972– 85 in Victoria proved difficult without using excessive resources. Systems for quota management have been established by AFMA and the States for other fisheries. However, it is currently considered impractical to implement quota management in the SSF until the fishery is managed under a single jurisdiction.
7.3 Surveillance
Most at-sea and on-shore surveillance has been undertaken by the States which have regional and in-port offices for fishery surveillance and extension purposes. Enforcement of licensing provisions, gear restrictions, mesh-size, closed season and legal lengths can be undertaken on-shore, and the need for costly at-sea surveillance through aerial and vessel patrol is limited. AFMA has facilities for satellite electronic surveillance through a ‘vessel management system’ which can be used for monitoring positions and time of vessels at sea. So far use of this system for enforcement of closed areas or, historically, closed seasons, has not been considered necessary for the SSF.
7.4 The legal process
The Commonwealth and States have Legal Officers and Enforcement Officers with authority to apprehend and prosecute offenders. A fisheries agency (or police department) can initiate legal proceeding through the courts. Some agencies have facility to issue on-the-spot fines for minor offences; this can avoid the need for court appearances unless the accused chooses to challenge the fine. Most penalties include fines or licence suspension but repeated offences can result in imprisonment.
Facilities exist to appeal, provided it is exercised within a limited period, against licence cancellation or restriction of licence conditions through the Australian Administrative Appeals Tribunal in the case of Commonwealth licences/permits or a Licence Appeals Tribunal in the case of State licences/permits. Appeals can also be lodged through the courts.
8. MANAGEMENT SUCCESS
8.1 Profitability of the fishery
Halving the number of vessels operating in the SSF in Commonwealth waters and reducing fishing effort by about one-third over the last decade has provided some improvement in the efficiency of the fishery. However, whilst the gummy shark catch increased marginally much of the economic gain from reduced effort has been offset by a large reduction in the school shark catch. Nevertheless, most operators with a major dependence on shark are operating profitability and benefiting from the management changes.
8.2 Issues of equity and efficiency
The current method of management with input controls raises issues of equity and efficiency. The legal of the original gear allocation processes based on historical levels of catches and amount of fishing gear used during the qualifying periods has resulted in large differences in gear entitlements among current operators. At present, the holder of a Commonwealth Shark Fishing Permit has no facility to upgrade the gear entitlements or transfer the gear entitlements to another operator. Implementation of ITQ management will address the problem of inefficiency, but the process of allocation of quota will inevitably raise issues of equity.
9. MANAGEMENT COSTS
Historically the cost of managing the fishery was met by the Commonwealth and State Governments. Following the establishment of AFMA and its assumption of day to day management of the fishery, most of the costs of management are now met by industry. The Commonwealth Government continues to contribute to the management costs, but most of the costs are now paid by industry. Each holder of a Commonwealth Shark Gillnet Permit or Commonwealth Shark Hook Permit pays an industry levy based on the number of gillnet and/or hook units held. During 1997/98, for example, the AFMA budget for the SSF was A$971 171 of which 72% was contributed by industry and 28% was contributed by Government. This budget covered the costs of management and administration by AFMA and the costs of SharkMAC, logbooks, and surveillance and compliance. The costs of research, SharkFAG and SIRLC were met from Government fisheries research funds.
10. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Much of the material assembled for this report was collated through the Southern Shark Fishery Assessment Group (see Walker et al. 1998b; Walker 1998b; Walker and Punt 1998) and the following people are acknowledged for their input: Tony Battaglene and Debbie Brown of the Australian Bureau of Agricultural and Resource Economics; David Johnson and Trysh Stone of the Australian Fisheries Management Authority, Jeremy Prince of Biospherics Pty Ltd, Kevin McLoughlin of the Bureau of Resource Sciences; André Punt and John Wallace of the CSIRO Division of Marine Research; Gerry Geen of Fisheries Economics, Research and Management Specialists; Natalie Bridge, Lauren Brown, Russell Hudson and Bruce Taylor of the Marine and Freshwater Resources Institute; Yongshun Xiao of the South Australian Research and Development Institute; Colin Simpfendorfer of the Western Australian Marine Research Laboratories; and the professional shark fishers Brian Bailey, Horst Fischer, Peter Riseley and Robert Wilson.
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