One of the most challenging issues facing trawl fisheries around the world is bycatch and discards. In most Australian trawl fisheries, more fish are discarded than are retained. This is a problem at multiple levels including social licence, negative environmental impacts and underutilisation of a resource. The Great Australian Bight (GAB) fishery have identified the potential to move towards becoming a ‘zero discards’ fishery. This project explores the options for the GAB fishery to develop markets for discards and so improve social licence, environmental outcomes and profitability. If this approach can be demonstrated to be feasible in the GAB fishery, then it would represent an example for other Australian trawl fisheries.
Other papers arising from this project
Fresh eyes on an old issue: Demand-side barriers to a discard problem
There aren’t plenty of fish in the sea, so let’s eat all that we catch