Moving towards more Responsible Fishing Practices in Australia s Northern Prawn Fishery

Abstract

Bycatch in Australia s Northern Prawn Fishery (NPF) is extremely diverse in both species and size composition. This makes developing responsible fishing practices to reduce the amount of bycatch in the NPF, a complex process. During this study we assessed the performance of Bycatch Reduction Devices (BRDs) that could be used in the NPF. We tested 16 different BRDs which can be grouped into one of 3 categories: (1) inclined grids (2) fish exclusion devices and (3) square-mesh codends. Four inclined grids were tested during our study. All the grids were extremely effective at excluding large animals such as sharks, stingrays and sea turtles. Three different fish exclusion devices were tested. Fish exclusion ranged between 0 and 39 percent, depending on the device. Prawn retention rates for both inclined grids and fish exclusion devices varied between devices. Two sizes of square-mesh codend (38 mm and 45 mm) were also tested. More than 95% of market-sized prawns were retained. Fish exclusion varied greatly between species. Optimum exclusion of bycatch for the NPF could be provided by a combination of devices from each of the three categories.