A proponent of sustainable fishing, Austral chief David Carter is taking up the case against even more regulation for the industry.
A proponent of sustainable fishing, Austral chief David Carter is taking up the case against even more regulation for the industry.
David Carter ought to be a poster boy for the federal government.
Austral Fisheries, with Mr Carter at the helm, is a leader in sustainable fishing and is pushing the message globally that our industry is environmentally sound.
Austral spends huge sums funding the monitoring and research into species it targets, especially the Patagonian toothfish, a resource the company pioneered two decades ago.
And, the chief executive officer of this Perth-based business is not some Johnny-come-lately to the scene. Mr Carter started his career as a deckhand in the 1970s and has spent decades working his way to the top.
This is the sort of industry leader that would be expected to reach the ear of government and receive a respectful hearing.
Instead, he is worried that fishing is getting similar treatment to other industries, where federal government policies have damaged the national interest with little regard for the ramifications of such actions on the livelihoods of people involved or the investment of businesses.
You don’t have to look far to find industries that have been battered by government policy – from cattle producers to educators of foreign students – and, according to Mr Carter, fishing faces similar, if less dramatic, threats from the heavy hand of regulation.
One is a push towards quota-style management in inappropriate fisheries and the other is the rapidly widening network of marine parks that are locking vast areas of Australia’s oceans from future commercial activity.
He sees both as the result of unscientific approaches to policy, often goaded by conservationist organisations.
This is the opposite path from past approaches, which, for instance, have made Patagonian toothfish such a model fishery.
“The great challenge for NGOs and regulators is to try to bring about reform that drives sensible fisheries management,” Mr Carter said.
“It is quite a subjective space and that is the reason we have been out here trying to put some real information in front of folks.
“It is often lost in the noise and hyperbole that is stolen from foreign examples that are not relevant to the debate.
“Australia consumers have an affinity for the marine environment but they don’t know what is going on, they have no idea that we have let go 26,000 fish with tags on them over the past 10 years.
“They have no idea that we put two observers on every boat that goes down south, or that we put 20 days research time in (per year) to make sure the fish stocks are well taken care of.”
While Mr Carter acknowledges the significant cost burden of the green tape involved in his business, especially the Southern Ocean fisheries, it has helped make the business sustainable for Austral.
His ships can venture out to sea for up to 100 days at a time, taking two federal government observers at the cost $1,000 per person per day. And 20 days of annual survey work is equally burdensome.
However, Mr Carter said the data provided evidence the catch was sustainable and the certainty of fisheries modelling was improved – delivering a higher allowable catch.
“Fisheries scientists’ reaction to uncertainty is precaution,” he said.
“So it pays to invest in that stuff. The more we understand about how fishing is performing the more we can maximise the allowable catch we can take.”
With this acceptance of science-based management of the local fisheries, in which it has a significant investment, the company – 50 per cent-owned by the family of one of its founders, Theo Kailis, and 50 per cent-owned by Spanish fishing giant Pescanova Group – is perplexed by a barrage of politically charged assaults on fishing in Australia.
Austral Fisheries’ most immediate fight is in the northern prawn fishery, where it has 10 boats, about 20 per cent of the fleet.
After years of adding restrictions to the way fishing takes place, the regulators are now pushing to completely change the fishery’s management to a quota system.
Mr Carter said quotas work best in long-lived species such as Patagonian toothfish, where taking too much in one year can be detrimental to future seasons.
In the case of banana prawns, he said, this was not valid because their lifespan could be measured in weeks and commercial viability for fishing them depended on being able to take as much catch as possible when the cycle dictated. This is driven by the seasonal conditions and is difficult to predict for quota purposes.
The amount of prawns caught in one year has no connection with what will appear the next. It would be like a farmer harvesting only part of his crop when he had a bumper season. Leaving some of the grain in the field has no impact on the next season’s crop.
Mr Carter is equally aghast at the huge amount of Australia’s waters being committed to marine parks by state and federal governments.
He believes that special interest groups, such as holiday home owners in WA’s South West, and conservation groups, particularly the US-based Pew Charitable Trusts, have been particularly effective in swaying government decision-making, without adequate scientific support.
With high-profile publicity campaigns, these groups have forced an emotional response from politicians, rather than evidence-based policy.
“In that kind if charged atmosphere the chance of a sensible outcome is diminished,” Mr Carter said.
“I really can’t understand why (federal environment minister) Tony Burke allowed himself to be drawn into that.”
He said the big global conservation groups tended to kill off the established local players, who had a better understanding of the local conditions and more interest in the overall well-being of the community.
He likens the actions of short-lived, high-profile campaigns to the very worst traits of industry they claim to want to stop.
“That is influential, that money and that kind of aggressive stuff, on local NGOs,” Mr Carter said.
“It is an original ecosystem. You have an existing flora and fauna of NGOs here; they lose their identity to this broader initiative.
“I liken it to the Australian possum going to the New Zealand South Island. It is a voracious pest.”
The Austral boss claims Australia already has 30 per cent of the world’s marine parks, a figure which is likely to rise to between 60 and 70 per cent if current proposals become practice.
He thinks this is an enormous restriction on future fishing opportunities, with restrictions that give little credence to the successful management of Australia’s ocean resources.
Mr Carter adds that the process has changed from the past, when industry had a voice during deliberations for marine parks, including the inclusion of Macquarie Island, which was the world’s biggest at the time.
