Recently we’ve been told of a potential Sardine fishery, available for development, in waters around Tasmania.

For a long time fisheries managers have enabled harvest down to a limit reference of 20% of unfished biomass (20% of available fish) or in other words to enable biomass reduction of 80%. The proposed Sardine fishery is no different with the same 20% limit reference being put forward as reasonable.

Sardines are a keystone species, forming an incredibly important link in the food chain, and deserve a higher level of protection than what is currently being proposed.

We’ve seen over exploitation of many Tasmanian fisheries and we want to ensure Sardines don’t go the same way. A fishdown limit of 20% includes unnecessary risk that the fishery will be reduced to a level where natural recruitment may be compromised, resulting in fishery failure. Any significant reduction in biomass also compromises availability of, recreationally important, predatory species such as snapper, yellow tail kingfish, southern bluefin tuna and Australian salmon add to that the reduced food source for seals, baleen whales, dolphins and a plethora of sea birds makes the current planning fundamentally flawed.

We call on the Tasmanian Parliament to set a limit reference of 50% of unfished biomass and a target reference of greater than 75% of unfished biomass. We also call for annual Daily Egg Production Method surveys for the initial 10 years of fishery development. We also want independent elected recreational fishers to be included in Harvest Strategy development and monitoring for the Sardine fishery.

The higher biomass levels will  enable ongoing and predictable harvest that doesn’t endanger the fishery or those that depend on it.