A landmark new national Australian fishing stock report shows that the majority of Australian fisheries are healthy and well managed.
The inaugural Status of Key Australian Fish Stocks Report, the first national snapshot of fish stock status undertaken in Australia, found that 90 percent of the wild-caught stocks in the report were from sustainable stocks.
The report, which is now online and available for public access, examines for the first time 49 of Australia's most popular wild-caught seafood species divided into 150 different stocks around the country and covering 70 percent of the Australian commercial fishing industry.
Of the 150, 98 stocks were classified as "sustainable", 11 as being in a "transitioning " phase either up or down, while 39 had insufficient data to allow them to be assessed. Two stocks – school sharks and souther bluefin tuna – were classified as "over fished".
Their status is colour-coded into green, yellow and red ratings under a system that's aimed at making it an easy tool for consumers to use in identifying the most sustainable fish to purchase.
Dr Patrick Hone, head of the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation, said the report had been an immense challenge to pull together.
"We are really celebrating today," he said at the Sydney launch of the report held at Bondi Beach seafood restaurant, The Bucket List, which Food magazine attended.
"This report is now something we can build on – it's a blueprint that we can use to continue to identify and improve where we need to."
Martin Excel, chair of the commonwealth fisheries association, told Food magazine the report's findings are very encouraging, and the report itself is a win for sustainable seafood, as it saw governments and 80 scientists from across the country working together to come up with a single reporting mechanism, using the same benchmarks for their research.
He says, however, that there's more work to be done. "Groups like WWF could say ‘well that’s true, the actual target stock is sustainable, but have you looked right across the fishery and seen whether catching that fish impacts on other species, like a seabird or a mammal?' So we can't oversell it [the report]. It is great news, that 90 percent of seafood stocks are rated as sustainable but that still leaves us plenty to do in terms of ensuring that a) the other 10 percent is well and truly sorted out ,and b) that we’re looking at the broader environment when we’re dealing with fishing.”