2019-07-18 OM Agenda - Item 1 - Attachment 1 - Noosa Fishing Futures

the T5 fishers who have historically fished the Noosa area being no more than eight fishers with as little as two
being active in recent years. The fishing season is open all year. The Fisheries Queensland data shows that 6
fishers were active in the T5 fishery in 2013, less than 5 in 2014, 6 in 2015 and less than 5 in 2016 and 2017 and
6 in 2018.

In January 2013, much of southern Queensland suffered from major flooding including in the Burnett and Mary
River catchments. In the six years that followed these major flood events, there has been a significant drop-
off in effort in the Noosa area T5 fishery with no more than 6 boats active in any given year. The average annual
catch over this 6-year period was 4.35 tonnes. This information is validated when discussed with local T5
fishers. The data for T5 Beam Trawl – aggregated method by year shows low volumes of prawns caught for
the data period 2013 – 2018.

                            Year      Fishing Method Group                Catch (t)

                            2013      Beam trawling                       6.48
                            2014      Beam trawling                       3.68
                            2015      Beam trawling                       2.98
                            2016      Beam trawling                       0.01
                            2017      Beam trawling                       2.13
                            2018      Beam trawling                       10.84


Numerous studies into the health of the Noosa River have been undertaken. Recent studies include the 2014
Historical Ecology of the Noosa Estuary Fisheries Report by Dr Ruth Thurstan. Dr Thurstan’s report
examined historical fisheries productivity in the Noosa Estuary to better inform the Noosa community about
ecological changes that occurred prior to their lifetimes, and to provide insights into the species that inhabited
the Noosa River and their changing abundance over time. The historical analysis of prawn trawling records
shows fishing effort declining from 1990 – 2015. The year 1991 showed 26 licenses recording catch for a total
of 1,103 fishing days down to a low of just 63 fishing days recorded in 2014.

More recently, Greg Skilleter’s interim findings report Biodiversity in the Noosa River System - Assessment
of the status and options for recovery of prawns & estuarine biodiversity in the Noosa River identified;
marked declines in the number of species and overall abundance in the sediments. Comparisons of data collected
in 1998 with samples from 2018, taken in exactly the same sections of the estuary. These declines were seen in all
the major groups of animals (polychaete worms, amphipods, bivalves and snails).

The report noted that, all these groups form a critical component of the estuarine environment, due to their roles
as food for fishes, crabs and prawns, major bioturbators (irrigators of the sediment, allowing oxygen and nutrients
to be recycled), and sediment stabilisers (stopping sediment resuspension through the formation of binding tube
mats).

Professor Skilleter said, in order to investigate these declines further, we repeated the 2018 sampling, at no
extra cost to NBRF, but resulting in some delays due to the costly nature of collecting and processing the sediments
to remove, count and identify the benthic infaunal animals. These samples have all been processed and final
checking of the identification of the fauna is being completed at present. Based on analysis of the quantitative
mapping data on threats from human activities within the shoreline of each major section of the estuary, we
sampled the benthic (living in sediments) and nektonic (fish, crabs and prawns) fauna to compare the animals
living adjacent to different types of human activity (control regions, canal estates, agricultural/forestry regions
and urban/residential regions).



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