- After Kiwi trawler fished here before, Australian orange roughy fishery reported fishing consistency had disappeared and caught only 2% of its quota
- Data suggests slow-growing endangered orange roughy populations in Tasman Sea are already in serious trouble
- Orange roughy fishery collapsed from overfishing in the 1990s; struggling since
The Australian Fishery Management Authority has authorised a New Zealand factory fishing vessel that targets Australia's endangered orange roughy fish to fly an Australian flag to trawl our waters and target more than a year of allowable catch.
The Amaltal Explorer is already trawling the eastern zone orange roughy fishing grounds off Tasmania's north-east coast, and has the capacity, with its onboard factory and freezer, to decimate the population of the already endangered orange roughy.
The massive factory trawler fished Australia's Cascade plateau - considered our only orange roughy grounds never to have been overfished - in 2021 and 2022, and in the following year the Australian orange roughy fishery reported that fishing consistency had disappeared and it could catch less than 2% of last season's allotted catch limit.
Reports suggest the Amaltal Explorer intends to bag this year's catch as well as potentially hundreds of tons that the domestic fleet was unable to catch last year too, under high-risk "100% undercatch provisions" not applied to any other Australian-managed fishery.
The orange roughy fishery off Tasmania's east coast already looks to be in deep trouble, catching just 1.6% of its limit in the Cascade plateau last season, and only 54% in the eastern zone. The fishery collapsed in the 1990s.
Orange roughy can live to over 250 years but they also breed slowly, with recent studies suggesting they don't reach their sexual prime until 70-80 years old, making the population highly vulnerable to collapse from overfishing. Australia's endangered species classification includes a strange quirk where threatened fish can be classified "conservation dependent", which means they can still be targeted by commercial fishers.
Orange roughy live on coral-covered underwater mountains called sea mounts. The deep sea trawl nets used to target orange roughy cause devastating damage to the ancient cold water corals on the sea mounts, and entire reefs have been destroyed.
The Australian Marine Conservation Society has written to federal fisheries minister Murray Watt urging him not to reflag foreign fishing vessels as Australian for the purpose of orange roughy fishing, noting that the fishing power of the ship significantly increases the environmental risks of its fishing relative to the domestic fishing fleet.
AMCS Sustainable Seafood Campaign manager Adrian Meder said: "Most Australians would be appalled that fishers can catch and sell endangered species for people to eat.
"The low orange roughy catches last season indicate there was not much orange roughy around, so allowing fishers to chase more than a year's worth of catch could decimate what's left of Australia's endangered orange roughy population. Our fishing industry has already reported that catches are disappearing after just a couple of years of resumed industrial fishing on even our supposedly healthiest orange roughy fishing grounds.
"Industrial fishing of a slow-growing endangered species is madness enough, but throw in the destruction of ancient deep-sea coral reefs and it's pure insanity. Orange roughy fishing is probably the most destructive type of fishing allowed in Australia today.
"The orange roughy fishery is synonymous with the worst excesses of overfishing in Australia. The fishery collapsed in the 1990s, and CSIRO stock assessments predict the orange roughy population in the eastern zone fishery will not reach a truly sustainable target population size until after 2070.
"Just two years ago CSIRO sounded the alarm about orange roughy numbers and recommended halving catch limits, yet the industry ploughed ahead and the latest figures show that fishers did not get close to taking their permitted catch in 2023-24. Now fishers are planning to double down on their failed efforts and possibly destroy what's left of the orange roughy population.
"In the bad old days of this fishery, when orange roughy was still abundant, boats were catching 50 tonnes in a single 'trawl shot'. Now the Cascade plateau orange roughy fishery has caught only seven tonnes in the last season and 16 tonnes in the previous season.
"We hope there's another explanation for catch numbers crashing, but we can't ignore what looks like the hallsigns of another 1990s-style fishery collapse. We are deeply concerned about our orange roughy populations and the industrialised fishing of them."
