New fishing regulations will cost Darcy his job but he never expected them to almost cost him his life

Fisherman Darcy Fazio will never forget the day he almost died doing a routine, mandated check of his fishing nets.

“There was a big crocodile there [next to the net] and I leant over the side of the boat and my hand got entangled in the gillnet,” he said.

“I would not have checked it then at all [if it hadn’t been required].

“I would’ve checked it maybe an hour and a half before and then I would have checked it two and a half hours after that had happened.”

Despite “no waves” and “great” visibility, the underwater current at Cattle Creek, north of Townsville, was stronger than he expected.

“I’ve overbalanced and my other hand was actually entangled to the point that my legs started kicking and striking and the observer actually grabbed me and dragged me back into the boat.”

Under new regulations aimed at validating the fishing catch, gillnets need to be checked every two hours to ensure protected species have not been caught, and an observer is at times required to be on board.

The latter might have saved Mr Fazio’s life, but the former, he says, nearly killed him.

Mr Fazio is calling on the government to “come up with a safe resolution”.

“Why can’t we do a visual check at our discretion? If the current’s too strong or the conditions are too dangerous, why do I have to endanger my life?” he said.

Risks to protected species

The Australian and Queensland governments have committed more than $160 million to phase out gillnet fishing in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area by mid-2027.

Gillnets are small nets that are thrown into the water, most with corks on them to help them float, and fish then become entangled in the mesh. 

Director of fisheries management at Fisheries Queensland Sian Breen said the decision to phase out gillnetting was based on evidence that it posed risks to protected species.

“Over a number of years there have been many interactions reported with threatened species such as dugongs, also dolphins, rays, sea snakes, crocodiles, turtles,” she said.

“From all of that science, over 30-odd years, it suggested that there did need to be further actions taken to minimise the impacts on those species from gillnetting.”

Darcy Fazio said in his experience, gillnetting had not had an impact on protected species.

“Where I fish in the estuaries, the dugongs don’t come in there because the crocodiles will eat them, and neither do the turtles.

“I have never entangled a turtle or dugong in my 20 years of fishing in an estuary.”

Phase-out in the Great Barrier Reef

To facilitate the phase-out, Fisheries Queensland have introduced 40, three-year NX licences to be allocated to eligible gillnet fishers.

There are about 240 gillnet licences on the east coast of Australia and about half of those are in the Great Barrier Reef World Heritage Area.

To date, 23 NX licences have been granted across three different management areas that operate across the Great Barrier Reef.

“These new NX [licensees] will be required to have cameras onboard their vessels and they will also have people observing their activities, not for every trip, but for quite a few trips,” Ms Breen said.

“That is going to validate some of the threatened-species interaction rates that they [fishers] have been reporting in the past.”

The new conditions, which require gillnet fishers to check their nets every two hours, is a worry for many in the industry.

Queensland’s fishers say the state’s new gillnet restrictions are so onerous fishers are now risking their lives to get fresh local seafood to Australian consumers.

“There’s certainly a couple of major safety issues that need to be addressed,” said Neil Green, a commercial net, crab and reef fisherman in North Queensland.

“I don’t want to see a death before something happens.”

Government intending to ‘refine’ conditions

Mr Green says fishers can prove they don’t catch endangered species, and the phase-out should be revoked.

“I’m all for cameras on boats, I think it’s a fantastic thing and it will prove that we’re not having these interactions,” he said.

Fisheries Queensland said a revision of the NX licence was possible.

“I think there’ll be some [conditions] that won’t be able to be revised because they will have been subjected to a government decision,” Sian Breen said.

“But certainly, others that are more operational in nature, we will be able to have a look at and refine and improve so that the fishers can remain safe, sustainable and actively working in the fishery.”

Demand growing for local, wild-caught seafood

Lucas Dansie, who owns a wild-caught-seafood store in Townsville, North Queensland, is “worried” about what the future holds.

“It’s really upsetting that after all of these years and my whole life of being in the industry and priding ourselves on what we do, the government’s trying to shut down this precious resource that we have,” he said.

Despite the rising cost of living putting pressure on wallets, consumer demand is growing for local, wild-caught seafood.

“We only supply local, wild-caught seafood, therefore, all of our options are the more expensive option,” Mr Dansie said.

“There’s been a paradigm shift in the later years of people looking for better quality and not necessarily caring so much for the price.”

But with a “scary” future ahead of him, Mr Dansie believes supplying Australian seafood is no longer on the cards.

“We’re going to be forced to basically sell imported seafood and we don’t want that at all,” he said.

Queensland Minister for Agriculture Mark Furner says that won’t happen.

“I want to make sure we stop as much as possible the importation of overseas fish … the only way we can do that is to have sustainable fisheries,” he said.