Grey Nurse Sharks, on Sunday

Hi Walter,
marine science, especially that to do with stock assessment - counting fish - has become very political at the expense of both science or conservation. Almost every Australian Marine Biologist is also a member of a conservation advocacy organisation. They simply do not see it as a problem.

Marine Biologists that work on sharks are a clique. Their basic premise is that sharks are ancient and have a low rate of reproduction which makes them vulnerable.

Ancient simply means successful over millions of years - regardless of the emotional reaction it is designed to generate. There is certainly nothing ancient about the biology of school sharks (pseudo placentals) - another species once declared endangered - now stripped from the EPBC list completely.

The supposed low rates of reproduction are actually at the high end of animals that produce well developed young with school shark pups bon live and independent.

If there is a weak point in the life cycle of many species of sharks it is the dependence of their young on high quality sheltered water habitats, especially bays, estuaries and inlets. These are the same places where we build cities, ports, heavy industry etc.

Blind adherence to inappropriate scientific method has promoted Grey Nurse Sharks well beyond their deserved status. This means that research, even artificial breeding, of grey nurse costs millions of dollars that could be better spent on monitoring juvenile shark use of inshore environments and the factors that regulate that use.

When the Commonwealth invited marine scientists to look at the southern shark fishery in the mid 1980's very little effort was made to examine the nature and history of the Australian fishery. Economists and other academics had already made up their mind that the fishery was in danger of being 'overfished' and already had the solutions in mind.

Ironically the collapse of the Californian school shark (tope, soupfin) fishery in the early 1950's was cited as an example of the impact of over fishing. Actually it was the loss of the market for liver oil which was replaced by artificial vitamin A. There was no market for shark flesh or skins and the Californian fishery collapsed.

By contrast school shark had become a keystone fishery in Victoria since the 1920's owing to their reliable year round abundance across an amazing range of depths and habitats in that state.

Further historical research would have revealed that the WW2 liver oil industry from mainly school sharks provided one company alone 500,000 gallons in a single year. There are about 20 sharks needed to make a gallon of oil and the weighed and average of 10-20 kilos per beast. As school shark made up around 80% of the catch for liver oil that actually weight/number of sharks during the war years was many times the post war catches.

The oil market was steadily lost in Australia and the post war fishery went back to supplying shark flesh to an eager public that called it flake. It withstood rapid expansion - sustained high catches for the war years and then went back to supplying flesh with oil from livers as a by-product of the then most valuable single species market in Australia.

A very suspicious ban on Victorian school shark only instituted by the health department in 1972 almost closed the Victorian fishery and enabled New Zealand, SA and Tasmania to get a major foothold for their school shark of any size (!)in the Melbourne market - the only decent paying market.

Victorian fishermen swapped from longlines, which did not discriminate the size of fish hooked to gillnets which the Hobson and Mitchellson families of Lakes Entrance had shown would mesh smaller gummy sharks.

Within months a new gillnet fishery was borne and the market preferred gummy shark, paying a premium price of 10-30% greater than that for especially large school shark.

In 1985, coincident with the Commonwealth move to take over fisheries beyond 3 miles Victorian shark scientists had the ban on oversize school shark lifted. The data base was already a shambles with most jurisdictions not distinguishing one shark landed from another - but the newly formed shark science team recorded a peak in school shark catches after the ban- and then a steady decline.

Common sense at the wharf would tell you that school shark misdescribed as gummy shark were school shark again and the renewed interest in school shark fishing was tempered by the poor price. Then the whole fishery became a complete mess as bureaucrats, scientists and economists took turns in kicking it around - to 'conserve school sharks' - and for the 'future of the fishery'.

Entry was frozen - then licences were issued based on what fishermen had caught in select previous years. Bass Strait is a mixed fishery the one boat being used for crays, sharks, scallops and even danish seining and trawling.

Then in 1988 a complicated formulae was used to deny boats the number of nets they needed to fish profitably unless they bought out another high catch boat. In the middle of the buyout there was a call for an 'urgent' 50% cut in catches and the creation of five committees that met between three and six times a year in addition to port and general meetings. A mess became a increasingly expensive shambles with 'full cost recovery' in the 1993 Fisheries Management Act enabling managers to push licence fees and charges from a few hundred dollars per boat to more than $20,000 for the same boat - before quota

From 240 odd licences only just over one hundred remained and of these only some sixty boats fished - the rest holding their license to cash it in later.

Aging skippers that had to hire others to run boats and increasing costs across the board which saw the fleet land pretty much as it always had and the price of flake to the public double.

With even fewer targeting school shark the catch dropped to around 700t. The scientist used catches from 'indicative vessels' to work out the catch per unit effort. It seemed well 'sustainable' so the selection criteria for indicative vessels was altered, slipping boats in that actually targeted gummy shark with low school shark catches. Like the grey nurse counting method there may be an explanation but it appears illusive.

The fleet was set a target catch of 540t of school shark for the year. An international fisheries scientist Ric Deriso reviewed the school shark stock assessment of April 1996 - noted the 'noisy data' and commented on catch per unit effort figures that were 'guessed by a committee according to rules that made that guess pessimistic.

The fishermen made a few calls, did a few deals and got the catch below the target - but it was not good enough - the selection criteria for indicative vessels was altered yet again and the new 'sustainable catch was et at 350t for 2000.

Managers said industry would never make it and put it under set catches ITQs, (the catch actually came in at a little over 300t - but the figures were released after quota which increased management cost by a further 200% and causing havoc as fishermen who could not buy boats 'legally' were having to pay more than $ 1 million for a catch history they actually caught for someone else. School shark are extremely common at the moment - the remaining fleet steams away from them with the quota used up already this year - so dumping of dead school sharks will start all over again as it will as long as scientist insist on being allowed to count fish - something they clearly cannot do adequately.

It is ironic that the catches of school shark were always regulated by the market - the number of buyers at the fish market on Tuesday. Thursday and Friday. When I fished in the early 1980's when the weather was fine. gummys and schoolies abundant and the price of scallops and crays a bit average a whole pack of boats would go sharking. This would have the affect of crashing the price by as much as 30% - which saw the 'excess' boats leave as fast as they came. A general purpose license allowed the very few people capable of running fishing boats to move between fisheries adapting to catches, weather and the market.

The cost of the overstatement of the impact of fishing on shark catches in the south has cost the Australian economy millions of dollars, thousands of jobs on boats, in provedore, processing etc.

The cost of developing a marine conservation industry instead of expanding fisheries into the Australian post 1989 200 nautical mile territorial waters is ridiculously unsustainable as the costs of enforcement industry to 'keep others out' to taxpayers grows to hundreds of millions of dollars.

Awaiting your relevant science Walter, not desperate insults to hide baseless prejudgements. Who's baffled? You're trying to stuff your turkey through the neck. Try the other end, it's more forgiving.

Pinxi,

You might also note that while my eco-nazi characterisation was directed specifically at the source of the preemptive press release you have quite voluntarily decided that you qualify for inclusion. As for my trying to baffle you, the effort would be superfluous. You are already doing a better job of that than I ever could.