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The issue of bycatch in Australia's demersal trawl fisheries

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Summary

A common definition of the term ‘bycatch’ is that part of the gross catch which is captured incidentally to the species towards which there is directed effort. Under such a definition, there are few fisheries in Australia (nor the world) which do not have bycatch, making the scope, diversity and history of the issue enormous. In recent years, the majority of interest in bycatch has focused on demersal trawl fisheries because conventional otter trawls are comparatively non-selective fishing gears and so catch large quantities of a wide range of untargeted species.

In general, the chief problems associated with bycatch from demersal trawling concern conflicts with other fisheries that target species which are discarded by trawlers (i.e. fishery-interaction problems). Research into this issue in Australia has concentrated on attempts to describe and quantify the highly variable but very large quantities and diversities of bycatches from prawn trawling. These descriptive aspects of the issue are prerequisite to identifying, understanding and eventually managing any problems. There has been some research on estimating actual impacts of demersal trawl bycatch on interacting fisheries via fishery-independent surveys of trawled and untrawled areas. Significant inroads also have been made in understanding the fate of discards as food for other organisms and effects that demersal trawling may have on habitats and consequences for macrobenthic assemblages.

Unfortunately the situation in Australia has been slow to progress to the next stage of solving the perceived problems of demersal trawl bycatch. It is clearly necessary to describe and quantify bycatches in specific fisheries (in order to assess whether any problems exist), but such work in itself is insufficient in solving the problems that arise when these bycatches are described. Once this preliminary descriptive work is done, it is necessary to test the effectiveness of alternative management strategies (such as closures and/or more selective trawl gears) which may alleviate any problems that have been detected. Several current research projects in Australia are showing the great potential that more selective trawl gears have for alleviating the chief problems concerning demersal trawl bycatch.

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Kennelly, S.J. The issue of bycatch in Australia's demersal trawl fisheries. Rev Fish Biol Fisheries 5, 213–234 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00179757

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