“THE protection of Australia’s fisheries is pushing seafood imports to record levels, driving overfishing in other countries and exposing consumers to unacceptable levels of antibiotics and other contaminants.
“Marine biologist Walter Starck said Australians were being forced to consume lower quality seafood imports, many from seriously depleted fisheries, even though Australia had a relative abundance in some species that was being underutilised.”
So begins the front page article entitled ‘Fish bans raise food poison risk’ in todays The Weekend Australian.
Yesterday Crikey.com.au ran a similar article citing figures from Walter Starck published at this blog in November 2005.
“Australia has the third largest territorial fishing zone … ‘green management’ has reduced our catch to the smallest in the OECD. We now import an ever-increasing amount of the fish we eat. Here are some fishery production figures (in metric tonnes) from 2003”
So, is there a chance we might see some policy changes? We don’t need to import fish. We shouldn’t be importing so much fish.
I see the current situation, at least in part, a consequence of the WWF Save the Reef Campaign. This campaign was explicitly about shutting down our northern fisheries and at the same time generating membership for WWF.
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD has worked in industry and government. She is currently researching a novel technique for long-range weather forecasting funded by the B. Macfie Family Foundation.