ILLEGALLY dispatched debris is threatening the livelihood of long-time commercial fisherman Tom Neil. In recent work trips to the waters off Cape Hillsborough and St Helens, Mr Neil and his crew have had their fishing nets wrecked by a dumped washing machine, a fridge and iron slats and poles. This has resulted in damage to two trawling nets, which will set him back more than $6000. The damage occurred in areas where trawling is permitted, just outside established green zones. Mr Neil, who has been fishing in Mackay waters for about 30 years, said the financial burden caused by these "booby-traps" was obviously detrimental, but matters could escalate should this issue continue. "There was heaps of stuff tied together with rope - pipe, bits of bar, aluminium mesh ... it's all tied together, gets in our nets and tangles them up," he said. "Thing is, if someone gets hurt seriously I get blamed for it. You could roll a boat over, you could sink - you could do anything if it's big enough. "We've trawled there for years and never hit anything, now all of a sudden there's something there and I can't move it. It has cost me a lot of money.
"It destroys your gear, so you have to anchor up and pull your gear apart ... you lose days of fishing. It's not right." The Department of Agricultural Industry Development and Fisheries last week announced a host of changes to the Fisheries Act. The changes include up to three years of jail time for black market trading and the establishment of exclusion zones around shark control equipment. Exclusion zones around commercial fishing equipment were not included, and Mackay Reef Fish Supplies owner David Caracciolo said this needed to be considered. While Mr Caracciolo said he supported some of the changes, such as new penalties for inappropriate disclosure of fishers' private information, stronger penalties needed to be enforced to protect the lives and livelihoods of commercial anglers. "I think they should put all commercial apparatus in there - commercial net fishers, commercial trawlers... it should be an exclusion zone," he said. "If somebody is proven to be doing this deliberately they should be prosecuted fully under the Act and it should be a jailable offence. "If someone loses their life (because) of someone deliberately sabotaging the commercial sector ... it's just ridiculous." Fisheries Minister Mark Furner said further changes to the Fisheries Act were expected later this year to implement reforms to fisheries management; particularly in the trawl, east coast inshore and crab fisheries. "This is all about building a legacy of a sustainable fishery for our children and grandchildren," Mr Furner said. "We need to protect jobs in both the commercial and recreational fishing sectors, and to do that we need to make sure the resource is protected." Mr Caracciolo said he had heard of similar dumping issues occurring at Yeppoon, the Fraser Coast and Burdekin regions, and he intended to arrange a meeting with Mr Furner and the Queensland Premier to make these concerns heard. "We'd just like to see the Minister take this on board and have a look at the interference with the commercial sector, and see how serious this dumping (is)," he said. "They (those who are dumping) are virtually sabotaging these guys from their jobs, but lives could be lost and vessels could be lost." Changes to the Fisheries Act
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AuthorA selection of my general news content. My main round was health, however I frequently covered weather, crime, politics and general human interest. Archives
January 2020
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