2021 State of the Environment Report Marine Chapter – Expert Assessment – Pressure – Commercial fishing

The Marine chapter of the 2021 State of the Environment (SoE) report incorporates multiple expert templates developed from streams of marine data. This metadata record describes the Expert Assessment "Pressures on the marine environment - commercial fishing". 
<strong><em>A PDF of the full Expert Assessment, including figures and tables (where provided) is downloadable in the "On-line Resources" section of this record as "EXPERT ASSESSMENT 2021 - Commercial fishing"</em></strong>



DESCRIPTION OF PRESSURE
Australia’s wild-caught marine fisheries are highly diverse and economically significant, contributing $1.79 billion to the economy in 2017-18 (ABARES 2018). These fisheries catch scallops, prawns, crabs, squid, Rock Lobster, Abalone, coastal fish such as whiting and flathead, reef fish such as coral trout, shelf and deep-water fish such as ling and blue-eye trevally, and oceanic tuna and billfish Although fisheries operate across all states and the Northern Territory and out to the limit of the Australian EEZ, fishing effort is not evenly distributed across Australian marine waters with the greatest fishing effort occurring in the Temperate East, South-East, North, and South-West Marine Regions (with effort greatest in the East and South-East). The impact of fisheries on the marine environment also varies with differing gears having differing impacts on species that might be caught as bycatch, and the habitats where fishing takes place. Methods used to capture those species are highly varied ranging from small-scale netting to large-scale pelagic long-line fishing and trawling (Stewardson et al. 2018). In the past five years there have been reductions in fishing effort by all trawl fisheries in all Bioregions, which have reduced trawl footprints over the last 1-3 decades. The most extensive trawl footprints have occurred in the Temperate East, South East, North and Northwest Bioregions (Pitcher 2018), associated with the Queensland East Coast Prawn Trawl, South East Trawl, Northern Prawn, New South Wales Ocean Trawl, and Western Australia trawl fisheries.  

DATA STREAM(S) USED IN EXPERT ASSESSMENT
This assessment is based on information contained in the 2018 Status of Australian Fish Stocks (SAFS; https://www.fish.gov.au/) Reports and the published literature. 



2021 SOE ASSESSMENT SUMMARY [see attached Expert Assessment for full details]

• 2021 •
Assessment grade: Low-High
Assessment trend: Improving
Confidence grade: Adequate high quality evidence and high level of consensus 
Confidence trend: Adequate high quality evidence and high level of consensus 
Comparability: Grade and trend are comparable to the 2016 assessment 
• 2016 •
Assessment grade: Low-High
Assessment trend: Improving
Confidence grade: Adequate high quality evidence and high level of consensus
Confidence trend: Adequate high quality evidence and high level of consensus
Comparability: Grade and trend are not comparable to the 2011 assessment
• 2011 •
Assessment grade: Not directly comparable
Assessment trend: Not directly comparable
Confidence grade: Not directly comparable
Confidence trend: Not directly comparable



CHANGES SINCE 2016 SOE ASSESSMENT
No change since 2016 assessment.

Tags: anthropogenic pressures, expert assessment, fisheries management, fishing pressure
Organization: Australian Ocean Data Network