Commercial Fishing on the NSW South Coast

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Commercial Fishing on the NSW South Coast

Conditions along the NSW South Coast have enabled its waters to support an unusually rich variety of marine species.

Abundant food for fish and other aquatic life is provided by the Eastern Australian Current that sweeps enormous quantities of plankton, fish larvae, crustaceans and other nutrients into the area. And the many rivers and lakes along the coast provide habitat for fish and other marine animals, and also deposit nutrients onto the extensive off-shore continental shelf.

The commercial value of fishing the South Coast’s waters was recognized in the early days with, for example, a shore-based whaling station being established in Twofold Bay by Thomas Raine in 1828.

Commercial fishing ultimately grew to become one of the South Coast’s major industries – but also has been an industry that has been typified by periods of significant boom and bust.

Its history is fascinating – but we warn, because ‘fishing’ embraces so many different forms of aquacultural activity, it is a story that cannot be adequately condensed to just a few pages. Our ‘net’, therefore, contains many holes!

The Breadth of South Coast Aquaculture

Those fishing, those harvesting seafood along the NSW coast have tended to be relatively small family-based enterprises that rely on high levels of local knowledge and skills learnt over many generations. There are now over 1,000 licensed operators in the state. Many were/are immigrants, or descendants of immigrants, from countries such as China, Italy, Greece and Britain.

The industry is highly regulated by the Australian and, particularly, the State governments. Different regulations, different quotas are largely based on the species of fish being targeted and the methods employed by those in the industry.

Broadly, NSW Fisheries divides the commercial fishing industry into a number of subgroups: Estuary Fishing (the most diverse of the commercial fishing sectors; around 600 fishing businesses have estuary fishing licences; most use mesh or hand nets), Estuary Prawn Trawling, Ocean Hauling (this includes both commercial fishing from beaches and within 3 nautical miles of the coast; pilchards, sea mullet and Australian salmon are the most commonly targeted species; commercial hauling and purse seine nets (see below) are utilized), Ocean Trap and Line Fishing (tuna fishing once dominated this sector, but now snapper, yellowtail kingfish,leatherjackets, bonito and silver trevally are the most commonly taken species; traps and a variety of lines with hooks are used), Ocean Trawl Fishing (including prawn trawling and fish trawling, with the principal fish caught being school whiting, tiger flathead, silver trevally, various species of sharks and rays, squid and octopus; otter trawl nets (conical shaped nets that are dragged through the water or along the sea floor) are often used), Lobster Fishing (around 100 operators are licenced and they use traps; South Coast lobster fishing developed from the 1960s, particularly around Ulladulla and Batemans Bay, after significant offshore lobster grounds were discovered off Sydney), Abalone Harvesting (from reefs close to the shore by divers using surface-supplied air or scuba tanks), and Oyster Growing.

The Development of the South Coast Fishing Industry

The availability of fish, the logistics of transporting catches to major markets (especially Sydney), and advances in mechanical technology (principally of motors and refrigeration) have largely determined how and when the South Coast fishing industry has developed.

The products produced from whaling – mainly whale oil and whale bone (baleen) – could be easily transported to markets in Sydney and other populated areas from the time that Thomas Raine pioneered the whaling industry in Twofold Bay. His success paved the way for the Imlay Brothers and Benjamin Boyd to follow shortly thereafter, and for the Davidson family to follow in the 1850s.

Other forms of fishing on the South Coast could not be as easily developed because there was no way of keeping catches cool until they reached the market (the Sydney Ice Company did not open until 1864) and there was no way of regularly, reliably transporting catches to major markets (the Illawarra Steam Navigation Company did not commence a weekly service to South Coast ports until around 1866).

So, until these obstacles were overcome, the local fishing ‘industry’ serviced little more than the needs of locals.

At that time, the limited commercial fishing that was undertaken was in lakes, estuaries and from beaches. Hand lines and hand nets were used – with perhaps the largest hauls being gathered by ‘stalling’, or netting off entire tidal flats at high tide to trap everything in the net when the water flowed out.

A major turning point for local fishermen was in the 1860s when steam engine vessels began transporting ice from Sydney (packed in sawdust to minimize melting) and taking fish to be sold in Melbourne and Sydney. Ice factories were built locally from the early 1900s and, because fishing required enormous quantities of ice, they prospered until the advent of refrigeration.

There was no lack of demand for South Coast seafood because, from the mid-1800s, the waters immediately around Sydney were showing signs of being overfished. An 1880 Commission of Enquiry into NSW Fisheries noted that fish were being ‘followed up every creek and cranny by their relentless human enemies’, and were ‘perpetually harassed and hunted’. ‘Meshes (of the nets being used) decreased in width, so that nothing escaped, and bushels upon bushels of small fry — the young of the very best fishes — were left on the beaches,’ because only larger, more popular fish such as bream, whiting and flathead were selected to be sent to market.
This Commission also resulted in government encouragement for the introduction of deep-sea fishing.
Deep-ocean fishing became possible, and commenced around 1925, once larger, more powerful engines became available. These enabled bigger boats to be built and for these to be equipped with power winches that could haul in larger nets. New species – such as tuna, salmon, blue-eye trevalla (blue-eye cod) and orange roughy (ocean perch) – were then able to be targeted.

New ways of fishing and new types of nets were developed. Set nets, such as gill nets and drift nets, and beam nets (nets that were towed behind a launch with a beam positioned to keep the mouth of the net open) were supplemented by seine nets (floating nets that were dropped around a school of fish, thereby encircling them; they were first used locally in 1936), which developed into purse seine nets (the bottom of a seine net was gathered together, trapping more fish because they could no longer swim away under the net (akin to a purse being zipped closed)).

Enormous numbers of salmon entered South Coast rivers to spawn during winter months, and fishermen from the 1930s to the late 1950s would net them in large quantities. At that time, salmon was considered a poor table fish, so the bulk were sold to canning factories. In Narooma, more fish were usually netted than the cannery could immediately process, so netted fish were towed behind a launch to a holding pen (one of these pens was McMillan’s near the entrance to Wagonga Inlet. It was 240-metre long and between 40- and 80-metres wide and was situated on the inside break-wall of the main channel, utilising the break-wall as a barrier). When processing capacity became available, the fish were simply re-netted and towed to the cannery.

Effective techniques for attracting and then ‘poling’ schools of tuna were developed in the mid-1940s. Huge numbers of fish were caught this way (hundreds of tonnes of tuna per day might be caught by a fleet of up to 50 pole boats operating out of Bermagui alone – with light aircraft ultimately being utilized to spot the shoals of fish), before poling gave way to purse seine fishing of tuna in the 1970s which in turn, from the 1980s and spurred on by the successful airfreighting of fresh-chilled tuna to Japan, gave way to longline fishing (the tuna being caught on hundreds of baited hooks that are strung along a single drifting line that extends for several kilometres).

The volumes of fish caught locally (especially Barracouta, Australian salmon and later Tuna) were potentially so great that a local fishing boatbuilding industry was established on the South Coast – initially at Moruya and later in Nowra, Batemans Bay and Bermagui. From 1938, local fish processing facilities (primarily canning works) were also established (see below).

Meanwhile, roads between the South Coast and Sydney were improving and refrigeration was becoming available. So, from the 1930s, fresh fish from the area could be transported direct to the Sydney markets by truck.

World War II had a significant effect on the local commercial fishing industry. Local shipbuilding ceased and numerous local fishing vessels and their crews were drafted into the Small Ships fleet to assist the war effort. Imports of canned fish were restricted (over 4,000-tonnes of Canadian pink salmon had been exported to Australia per year prior to the war – so a significant local market for canned salmon became immediately available), and the war created an enormous demand for local canned fish to feed the Allies’ fighting forces and home markets.

From the 1940s, significant changes have occurred in the local fishing industry. For example, freezers were added to fishing boats to save landing fish into markets or processing facilities when gluts were being experienced. This, in turn led to on-board processing of fish, and eventually to the construction of huge factory ships, some of which act as mother ships to an attendant fleet of smaller fishing vessels.

Simultaneously - perhaps to the detriment of local fishermen - fishing has become ‘global’, with more overseas fishing vessels and factory ships being attracted to southern Australian waters.

Processing

The first fish cannery on the South Coast was opened in Narooma in 1938. It had the capacity to produce eight million 12oz cans of fish per year from a single shift of workers. It also processed fish offal into fish meal.

Forty fishermen supplied the cannery – at various times with salmon, barracouta, tuna, mackerel, scad and pilchards. Its tinned fish was mainly marketed under the Greenseas and Nar-Roo-Ma brands.
The Narooma fish cannery operated until 1960.

Between 1940 to 1999 a fish cannery operated in Eden (initially on the northern side of Lake Curalo, before a larger works was erected in 1948 on the shores of Cattle Bay – but only after legal restrictions were overcome thatwould have required the fish processed in Eden to first pass through a metropolitan fish market!) which employed about 150 locals. It was supplied at its peak by 40 tuna boats. It normally processed about 3,000 cans a day, but this rose to almost 15,000 cans at peak production.

Between the mid-1950s and 1960 a small tuna cannery operated on the Bermagui Steamer Wharf. Its product was marketed under a Cee-Dee Products brand. Any fish that this cannery could not handle were trucked to the larger cannery in Eden.

Sustainability

Throughout Australia’s history, a fine line has been walked between commercial exploitation and sustainability of fisheries. As previously noted, concerns were expressed about overfishing near Sydney as early as the mid-19th century and these led to an interest in the possibility of opening up fishing areas on the South Coast.

The introduction of ocean trawling in the 1920s only exacerbated things. For example, 2.3 million tons of tiger flathead were taken from the Botany Grounds off Sydney in 1919 but this crashed after the introduction of ocean trawl fishing to just 0.2 million tons in 1937. In the 1970s and 1980s, the same boom-to-bust scenario played out with southern blue-fin tuna and orange roughy.
The governments’ response has been to introduce stringent regulations, licences, bag limits and quotas to the industry. This has resulted in fewer commercial fishermen being able to operate in NSW, with the abalone industry (primarily a South Coast industry) providing a good example.

Commercial fishing for abalone began in the early 1960s with annual catch rates of between 200 and 400 tonnes, but peaking at 1,200 tonnes in 1971. Growing concerns about the state of the resource led to an inquiry in 1979 that recommended that the abalone and sea urchin industry become a restricted entry fishery. This took effect the following year when only 59 divers were granted access to the fishery - down from more than 100 divers the previous year. Since then the number of divers has been reduced further (by 2000 it had reduced to 37) and individual catch quotas were introduced in 1989 in a further attempt to maintain the viability of theindustry.

In a further attempt to maintain fish stocks, six marine parks (no-go or restricted fishing
areas) have been established in NSW since the 1980s. Two of these are on the NSW
South Coast: the 202 square kilometre Jervis Marine Park, established in 1998, and the
850 square kilometre Batemans Marine Park which extends from Murramarang Beach to
Murunna Pont just north of Bermagui, which was established in 2006. The establishment of these has not been without consequences – extensive and lucrative prawning grounds off Long Beach having, for example, been closed.

Cultural Fishing

Aboriginal peoples of the South Coast see fishing as an integral part of their culture.
Fishing provided them with, and many believe should still provide them with, food and a
commodity that can be traded.

As their traditional lands became privately owned and they thereby became excluded from areas where traditional hunting or gathering food occurred, and as they were forced onto missions, Aboriginals became increasingly reliant on fishing. In fact, they were actively encouraged to depend on fishing, as both the Wallaga Lake and Wreck Bay Aboriginal communities on the South Coast were established as fishing-based communities, with boats and nets being provided to enable their residents to fish.

In the late nineteenth century, Aboriginal people on the South Coast collected and dried mutton fish (now called abalone) for export to China. And whole communities would also come together to haul schools of mullet off the beach, with everyone who helped taking a share of the catch. These activities additionally served to reinforce aspects of Aboriginal culture, and to pass on traditional knowledge and values to younger generations of Aboriginals.

When the New South Wales Government began regulating access to fisheries with licences, quotas and bag limits, and when more non-indigenous fishers entered the industry, Aboriginal fishers were further impacted. This led to the formation of an Aboriginal fishing rights movement that has campaigned to have traditional Aboriginal fishing values recognised and respected. It also resulted in a South Coast native title claim covering the area from Bundeena, just south of Sydney, to the Victorian border and three nautical miles out to sea.

Cultural fishing has been legally recognised as distinct from commercial fishing since 2015: Aboriginal people in NSW do not need to apply for the normal licence or pay the normal fee as a cultural fisher (providing, however, they do so within the provisions of the Act and its Regulations) and Aboriginal fishers can take double the normal bag limit of fish and five times the daily limit of abalone.

South Coast Aboriginal cultural fishing is, however, still not fitting easily with modern, licenced, regulated Australian commercial fishing or with recreational fishing. Those now advocating for change most commonly argue that recreational fishing bag limits often aren’t high enough for a single cultural fisher who may be aiming to feed 10, 20 or more people, and that it is unreasonable to now restrict the trade of a long-established, integral part of Aboriginal culture.

The question of access to culturally important fishing spots has become yet another issue. Indigenous people provided knowledge about their cultural fishing spots during the planning of the two South Coast marine parks, only to have them designated as protected zones where all fishing is prohibited. This left them with the feeling that the government and non-Indigenous people really don’t care about what has happened to their communities and culture...communities with a culture that successfully managed their sea country and its resources for many thousands of years.

Sources: Fisheries Newsletter, July 1949; various NSW Fisheries websites; Material Evidence for Early Commercial Fishing Activities on the Far South Coast of New South Wales by Alister Bowen in Australasian Historical Archaeology, 22, 2004; Australia Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies; ‘Plenty of fish in the sea? Not necessarily, as history shows’ in The Conversation; ‘Death of a Town’ in sailworld.com 13.11.2012; Regional Profile East Marine Region, Australian Government Bureau of Rural Sciences, 2007; ‘Narooma’s Past’ by Laurelle Pacey.