Big environmental improvements for wild-caught prawn industry

Therese Murphy and her family are proud of their part in improving the environmental reputation of Australia’s prawn trawling industry.

Australian Ocean King Prawn’s 11 trawlers work a sandy sea bed where there is no reef or seagrass, 120 kilometres off the coast of Gladstone.

Compulsory satellite tracking and turtle excluder devices — which allow turtles, sharks and rays to safely escape — are standard equipment on every boat.

The Urangan-based business independently adopted the additional environmental measure of installing electronic monitoring cameras, including lenses pointed at the ocean floor.

Ms Murphy said an independent scientist verified and assessed the pictures of bycatch twice yearly, and they kept records of the by-catch they were legally bound to throw overboard.

Ms Murphy said that allowed them to monitor any trends in stocks of non-targeted species dragged by the nets.

“People want to know that the food that they’re eating. They can have peace of mind that it’s been sustainably sourced,” she said.

In 2023, the Murphy’s made history by becoming Queensland’s first state-managed fishery to earn accreditation from the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC ), an international non-profit association aiming to set standards for sustainable fishing and end overfishing.

“We had to invest a lot of money into it, but we recognised, or my father Barry did, that that is what the consumer wants,” Ms Murphy said.

“We work very closely with Fisheries Queensland in the hope that the whole fishery will be certified one day.”

Ms Murphy’s mother, father, three brothers, and grandchildren work in the business which tows nets shaped like a funnel with a wide opening to catch fish and a narrow, closed end.

Operating since 1984, she said they had never caught a turtle.

Improved practices

The 250 active boats in Queensland’s East Coast Otter Trawl Fishery (ECOTF) catch species, including tiger prawns, Endeavour prawns, king prawns, and Moreton Bay bugs from the tip of Cape York down to the New South Wales border.

It is Queensland’s largest fishery, employing and supporting jobs for over 1,300 people.

The harvest is around 6,000 tonnes a year, down from the peak in the mid-1990s when it was well over 10,000 tonnes from more than 1,000 trawlers.

Once regularly criticised by environmental groups, the wild-caught industry is now collaborating with conservationists and governments to improve practices and reduce by-catch.

“The footprint is very small, it’s really well managed, there’s a complex suite of regulations that apply from effort caps, from limited licensing to real-time vessel tracking,” said Fisheries Queensland executive director Dallas D’Silva.

“Every boat has a satellite tracker on board so we can see where the boats are fishing. There’s zoning, there’s strict harvest limits, compulsory by-catch reduction devices.

“It’s an industry that continues to strive to meet ‘best practice’, and we’re really proud of that.”

Mr D’Silva said recent assessments for prawns and Moreton Bay bugs showed that stocks were in “terrific condition”.

It generates an annual value upwards of $100 million with approximately 40 per cent, equating to $40 million in product, exported to markets including Singapore and Hong Kong last year.

In December, the ECOTF gained export approval for the next three years after passing a federal environment legislation assessment.

The Queensland Seafood Industry Association CEO, David Bobbermen, said the renewed export licence was critical and gave the industry both certainty and vindication.

“We know we operate sustainably, and we operate amongst some of the tightest regulations in the world,” Mr Bobbermen said.

Simon Miller from the Australian Marine Conservation Society (AMCS) said while the Queensland trawl fishery is making progress, his organisation is yet to classify the industry as sustainable.

The AMCS advises consumers to buy Australian-farmed prawns over wild-caught product.

Its concerns with the trawling industry include by-catch, particularly of protected sea snakes, in north Queensland.

But work to get cameras on boats and to address the by-catch of threatened species are giving them hope.

“There’s a funded project that’s testing some new by-catch reduction devices that are specifically designed to try and reduce the catch [of thousands of] sea snakes,” Mr Miller said.

“They are still in a fairly early trial phase but we’re seeing reductions between about 20-65 per cent.

“Obviously, if we can see a nearly two-thirds reduction in the catch of sea snakes, that’s a really excellent result from the fishery.”

Mr Miller said that historically, there had been challenges getting accurate data on threatened species interactions with the fishery.

“The most cost-effective solution is to get these electronic monitoring cameras on boats to help validate we are getting accurate data,” he said.

In the future, artificial intelligence could aid the process of monitoring bycatch.

Industry support

Paul Schenk is the general manager of Mooloolaba Fisheries, a 42-year-old wild-caught seafood business that is one of the busiest in south-east Queensland.

“We need to work together and understand what needs to be done. If they want cameras on boats we put cameras on boats,” Mr Schenk said.

“We’ve got one boat here on the wharf that’s fourth generation, so of course, they understand the sustainability of what they do — probably much better than all of us.”

The MSC has certified that over two-thirds, or 69 per cent, of wild-caught prawns in Australia are farmed sustainably.

Skull Island Tiger Prawns and Spencer Gulf King Prawns were the first, and Shark Bay Prawns, Raptis Ocean Pearl Banana Prawns, Hanna V King Prawns, and Karumba Banana Prawns have also earned an MSC tick.