The Fisheries Department today announced that it had allocated 593 fishing quotas across 8 fishing sectors. 2870 Applicants had failed to secure a fishing right. Decisions on 22 applications were reserved.
The Fisheries Department today announced that it had allocated 593 fishing quotas across 8 fishing sectors. 2870 Applicants had failed to secure a fishing right. Decisions on 22 applications were reserved.
However, the department continued to embroil the process in secrecy and confusion. DAFF failed to make public who the successful applicants are in each sector and which applications were subjected to "reserved" decisions and when these reservations would be resolved.
DAFF did however confirm that successful applicants would be allowed to continue to fish without any fishing permits or vessel licences and that these successful applicants would be informed by "SMS" and emails. This illegality and violation of the provisions of the MLRA would be permitted by DAFF for periods of 1 to 2 months (January 2014 to February 2014). Notification by SMS and email will be of little use to many squid, tuna pole and line fish operators who have already tied up their boats and sent their crew home because DAFF failed to timeously announce these rights.
The following is a summary of the numbers for the rights application / allocation process:
(We do note that the number of successful, reserved and unsuccessful applications total 3485 and not 3490). Five applications appear to be unaccounted for based on the total number of applications received - 3490).
It is unclear why so few fishing rights were allocated in these effort controlled fisheries - is the department expecting such a huge success rate on appeal? There are some 1000 fishing quotas available for allocation. For example, 450 fishing rights (fishing vessels) and 3450 crew can be allocated in the linefishery but only 215 rights allocated, which is less than half of the available effort. The tuna pole fishery can accommodate 200 vessels.
A proper analysis of this process can only be undertaken once the official General Published Reasons for each sector, together with the complete lists of applicants, successful applicants and reserved decisions are made public. It is unclear why these documents were not made public today as well.
Regardless though of the reasons underpinning the decisions, this announcement remains unlawful and a violation of section 25(1) of the MLRA as the fishing rights have been issued and/or granted in the absence of an obligatory fees gazette.
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