FISHING NEWS
24 | fishingworld.com.au | March 2015ONLINE THIS
MONTH
FISHINGWORLD.COM.AU
THIS piece is actually a request
to Tuross Lake regulars to send
us back a bit of information.
Late last year the South East
Trawl Fishery Industry
Association’s newsletter
featured some analysis of a
Fisheries study completed back
in 2005 which compared
captures by anglers recorded in
a 1999/2000 study with catches
from one conducted in
2003/2004. The first was
undertaken prior to the lake’s
establishment as an RFH ...ENVIRO NEWS:
TUROSS REPORT
BY JOHN NEWBERYTHE catch rate of snapper off the
Queensland coast has declined by almost
90 per cent since the late 19th century,
according to a new study. The Guardian
reports researchers from the Centre of
Excellence for Coral Reef Studies have used
historical accounts of fishing trips in
newspapers to calculate the rate of snapper
catch by fishermen from the late 1800s to
early 1900s. The lead author of the study,
Ruth Thurstan, said it was something of a
cross between history and science. “There’s
official government data on the snapper
fishery that starts from just after the second
world war onwards, but anecdotally weknew that the snapper fishery had been
occurring for some decades prior,” she said.
“Just on a whim I thought I’d check out
some of the local newspapers, and I found
more information than I could ever have
imagined on the snapper fishery in
Brisbane. The study went on to find that
the catches of snapper and other fin fish
species frequently ran into the hundreds of
fish per trip when targeted from early
charter boats. The historical figures were
compared with contemporary figures from
charter boats. Even accounting for modern
catch limits, the contemporary catch rate
was far lower than the historical rate.”Study reveals snapper decline
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