A group of recreational fishermen in Australia recently had the commercial fishing lobby in that nation all fired up when the group claimed the commercial shark fishing industry was overfishing southern coastal waters. The recreational fishermen say the gill nets used by commercial shark fishing operations were indiscriminately wiping out the local stocks of prized scale fish as they fished for sharks.
The criticism was not well-received by the commercial shark fishermen in Australia who dismissed the over-fishing claims as ill-informed and hysterical reactionary behavior and that the calls for them to be banned from fishing in coastal waters off the Australia were out of order. The commercial fishing sector that is largely represented by the WA Fishing Industry Council, hit back at the claims as Council executive officer Guy Leyland said the comments were the “superficial arguments of disgruntled fishermen that ignored many of the facts.” Leyland argued that WA Council’s shark fishermen were subject to some of the toughest by-catch restrictions in the world and this ensured the fishery was sustainable and not a threat to other species of sport fish. He also stressed that the commercial shark fishery was vital to the State’s restaurant and hospitality industry. Local commercial shark fishing businessmen also discounted the criticism saying that the populations of sharks and other fish stocks off the south Australian coast were in perfectly healthy shape and the suggestion that gill nets were destroying fish populations was totally wrong.
Commercial fishermen around the planet usually claim they already labor under unfairly strict laws governing their trade, and very few are likely to welcome additional restraints. But if recreational sport fish stocks as well as local shark populations are to continue to be able to provide adequate numbers for commercial and recreational uses in the future, new legislation and restrictions are inevitable. One thing is certain, the sharks and fish can’t file a protest on their own. Only humans concerned with preserving the oceans and all the life within them can do that.
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