Bowen shark fisherman slams WWF push for North Queensland net ban

One of North Queensland’s last commercial shark fisherman has slammed WWF Australia’s net ban plan.

A  CALL to create a net-free fishing zone in North Queensland has irked one of the last remaining shark trawler operators in the region.

World Wildlife Fund ­Australia chief executive ­Dermot O’Gorman pushed for the banning of gill nets after seeing photos of sharks stacked on the deck of a trawler off the Great Barrier Reef.

He claimed the photos showed the destructive impact of commercial netting.

Mr O’Gorman called both State and Federal governments to ban gill nets from north of Cooktown to the tip of Cape York, creating an 85,000sq km refuge.

Bowen-based Mark Savins, 57, the owner of Rhonda K, said the ban would be one cut too many in an ­industry that has dramatically changed during the 30 years he has been a commercial ­fisherman.

“I got no faith in the industry. It seems to be all against everyone in the industry,” he said. “It’s changed a lot. When we started, what we caught, we sold everything. There was a lot more boats doing it but as it went on, they thought we were catching too much. They cut our nets in half.”

Mr Savins said commercial fishers could once use 1200m of net in depths of more than 20m but this was reduced to 600m, making it more difficult to catch legal quotas of shark.

He said a change in people’s preferences of fish had also changed, creating more bycatch.

“We’re throwing so much away. It’s practically going to put us out of business,” he said.

“The market, now, for us will only take the top quality.”

Mr Savins said while there was a demand for high quality shark, commonly sold around the country as flake, he said prices had not changed much in the past 20 years.

He said he got between $1.50 to $7.50 per kg at auction.

The fisherman said sharks were abundant in North Queensland and a sustainable fish to target.

“The sharks are everywhere. That population of sharks is going up,” he said.

WWF-Australia head of oceans Richard Leck said there could be a number of reasons for the trawl operator believing certain shark species were ­increasing.

“It’s well known that sharks congregate behind trawl ­vessels hoping for an easy feed. Trawl boat numbers have halved since 2000,” he said.

“The remaining vessels would attract more sharks.”

Mr Leck said last year, ­University of Queensland and Griffith University researchers found large apex sharks such as hammerheads, tigers and whites had declined by 74 to 92 per cent along Queensland’s coast.

“Gill nets are indiscriminate killers of anything that swims into them including threatened species such as dugongs, snubfin dolphins, turtles, sawfish and scalloped hammerhead sharks,” he said.

Queensland Fisheries Minister Mark Furner told News Corp more than 120 ­netting ­licences had been bought back in the past decade, leaving less than 200 large mesh net licences on the east coast.

Originally published as Bowen shark fisherman slams WWF push for North Queensland net ban