2015-11-10 - P&O Agenda - Item 7, Attach 1 - Historical Ecology of the Noosa Estuary Fisheries

The records left by the Fish Board, in addition to contemporary logbook data
collected since 1990, provide us with records of landings of commercial fish over
a 70-year period (Fig. 5). Although landings of fish are reported in Fish Board
records, fishing effort (e.g., how many days were fished, or how many fishers
were working) is not. Government correspondence states that in 1944, 11 net
crews (consisting of 1 to 4 men) actively worked the Noosa River and Lakes
(Department of Harbours and Marine 1945). Some fishers also fished part time,
so this number would have fluctuated throughout the year. This lack of
information, alongside changes in management regulations over the years and
the potential differences in areal coverage by the two datasets, means any long-
term changes in recorded commercial catch must be interpreted with caution.
What can be seen, however, is that landings of the major species were highly
variable from year to year, and that mullet have dominated commercial catches
within the Tewantin and wider region over the last 70 years (Fig. 5). These
catches declined in the 1960s, partially due to a drop in consumer demand for
mullet (the consequence of a ‘kerosene’ taste in the fish flesh, which was
subsequently found to be harmless) but also the shifting of fishing effort to the
prawn fishery, which increased rapidly throughout the 1950s before stabilising
in the 1960s (Fig. 5).




                                                                                    26