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

suggest that the high post-war catches were limited to these two post-war years.
Higher catches could have been due to increased demand, increased fishing
effort, or large quantities of bream during these years, but it is difficult to know.
Between 1946-1981 bream landings steadily decreased, but since 1990 landings
of bream have been variable but stable. Quantities of tailor landed are also
variable from year to year, but recent landings are lower than historical landings
(Fig. 5). Whiting were also historically caught in significant numbers, together
with flathead, although flathead were caught in smaller quantities compared to
the other species. Again, catches were highly variable, but a decline was
witnessed in flathead landings between 1946-1981. From 1990 landings of
flathead increased to greater quantities than historical records (Fig. 5).


Since 1990, fishing effort has also been recorded to species, although this again
must be interpreted with care given that a number of other factors can affect
catch rates, particularly targeting behaviour of fishers as a result of changing
regulations or market incentives. Trends in catch rates (quantity of fish landed
per day fished) vary for the different species; increasing for mullet and prawn,
declining for tailor, and remaining stable for bream, whiting and flathead.


In addition to the species highlighted above, historical records show that
commercial fishers routinely caught other species in their nets, in particular,
jewfish; these could be large fish weighing up to 9kg, although most were much
smaller than this. A ‘record consignment’ of jewfish was recorded from Lake
Cootharaba in 1929, when three crews combined and together caught 55 cases
(approx. 1.1t) of jewfish weighing from 1.3-5.5kg each (The Brisbane Courier, 17
Jul 1929). The increase in minimum landing size of this species in recent years
has, however, reduced commercial landings of this species within the river
system (pers. comm., interview).


While it is unknown just how much of the landings recorded by the Fish Board
were sourced from the Noosa River and Lakes, Grant and Kesteven (1965)
suggest that of the quantities of mullet recorded by the Tewantin Fish Board
prior to 1965, probably greater than 90% of the total catch was taken from the


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