On the NSW North Coast we can all be proud of the fact that local commercial fishing fleets have begun to take onboard the idea of sustainability and the need to better manage how they harvest wild fish stocks.
Even if one day of keeping an eye on recreational fishers is likely to make the blood run cold with apprehension for future river estuary fish numbers.
Nationally, overfishing by both groups remains an issue.
Nineteen of the twenty-eight fish categories that are managed by the Commonwealth are still overfished and two more are close to being overfished.
With fish meat being an established part of the global diet, human population numbers and known fish numbers are showing a disturbing scenario.
Is anyone not aware that wild fish are in deep trouble? That three-quarters of commercially caught species are over-exploited or exploited to their maximum? Do they not know that industrial fishing is so inefficient that a third of the catch, some 32 million tonnes a year, is thrown away? For every ocean prawn you eat, fish weighing 10-20 times as much have been thrown overboard. These figures all come from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), which also claims that, of all the world's natural resources, fish are being depleted the fastest. With even the most abundant commercial species, we eat smaller and smaller fish every year - we eat the babies before they can breed.
Callum Roberts, professor of marine conservation at York University, predicts that by 2050 we will only be able to meet the fish protein needs of half the world population: all that will be left for the unlucky half may be, as he puts it, 'jellyfish and slime'. Ninety years of industrial-scale exploitation of fish has, he and most scientists agree, led to 'ecological meltdown'. Whole biological food chains have been destroyed.
Australian Bureau of Rural Sciences Fisheries Status Report 2006 here. Australian Marine Conservation Society Sustainable Seafood Guide here.
