Mulloway harvest strategy update

Recreational Fishing Alliance of NSW © Recreational Fishing Alliance of NSW

The RFA has been seeking additional information on Mulloway from Fisheries since 11 May to better inform stakeholders, as there are significant gaps in the data presented as part of the consultation process.

We have also offered our thoughts on how to improve public consultation. Some of those suggestions were to capture the respondents' interest area, recreational fishing fee number, whether they are a licence-exempt fisher, part of a community organisation or other interest group supporting the environment, or an anti-fishing lobby group. We also suggested improvements to the 2000 character and word limited boxes used for the submission forms.

These improvements would value add to the data being captured and reported, ensuring aspects of the online submission and emailed submission process could be validated and fact checked, avoiding out-of-NSW and overseas-generated submissions. It seems no lessons have been learned from questionable past public consultations.

The RFA has now written to Fisheries Minister Tara Moriarty and the Premier and has submitted a formal GIPA/FOI application for all relevant Mulloway information that has not been shared as part of this process. The RFA is now formally requesting an initial extension to the 25 May 2025 closing date, pushing it out to 14 July 2025, pending a timely response to the RFA's GIPA request, and has even flagged that the process be paused immediately. The RFA has also written to the Hon, Mark Banasiak, MLC, (Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party), asking him to flag the issues directly with the Minister.

There should not be a rush on this matter as historically there have been so many Fisheries changes that go beyond commercial fishing/fisher numbers that include added net free zones, Trust-funded mulloway stocking programs, attitudinal changes in recreational fishers releasing fish by choice or new rules, changes in fish size, bag and possession limits, trip limits in some fisheries with real-time catch reporting by many commercial fishers.

The main issues and faults in the data provided starts at the very different and misaligned and lopsided recreational and commercial data sets Fisheries have collected for so long (at great expense to the public and fee-paying fishers). For too long we have seen the inability for fisheries managers and researchers to effectively and efficiently deal with commercial landed weight only, no numbers or size data in reported catches, versus a small sample size of recreational fishers data based on the numbers of fish caught - not weight or size. Problems arise when the data is then mathematically extrapolated to account for guesstimated numbers of the recreational catch, which as we have seen leads to massive errors across all initial input data points.

Other issues which must be considered are the inability of Fisheries' compliance and enforcement policies and operational planning to manage, accurately report and curtail Illegal fishing activities and the illegal sale of fish - this is mainly to the due limited Fisheries officers numbers. And steps must be taken to start improving the submissions management, especially when real-time social media, simple citizen-science posts and comments are the opposite to the old reactive fisheries data management options still being presented to us in 2025.

Finally, the entire harvest strategy public consultation practices and processes to date, which clearly discriminate against non-English speaking or those with limited computer skills, need resetting, and a re-think to bring them out of the dark ages. It seems Fisheries are in a rush to move forward with only backwards tools at their disposal.

All of us, especially the RFA, want to see Mulloway get a fighting chance, but let's get it right before we go down the Groper rabbit hole once again. Let's reset and get it right and do it properly, transparently and take the entire community along with us. Whilst the process should always be about the Mulloway and where they live and how we have impacted them, the underlying lack of information and lack of meaningful consultation processes further erodes the confidence in Fisheries, and ultimately in the Minister.

If you are going to participate in the current process make sure you tell them what the issues are. The RFA has put their hand up once again to better represent the anglers in NSW and give the silent and often ignored majority a chance to speak, and not be treated with contempt because departments are too lazy to do their jobs or use reliable data to better inform the process.

Stay tuned for more updates.