This article is more than 4 years old

This article is more than 4 years old

The Queensland government is allowing commercial fisheries to catch endangered sharks on the Great Barrier Reef, with a quota based on data that was useless for managing the shark numbers, according to an independent peer reviewer.

Shark experts and WWF are calling for an observer program, which was axed by the previous government in 2013, to be reinstated so that better data on shark catches can be collected.

“It’s not possible to draw any real conclusions about what’s happening with the status of shark populations based on that assessment, given the limitations in the data,” said Colin Simpfendorfer, a shark researcher from James Cook University, who wasn’t involved in the initial study or the independent peer review.

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The Queensland government allows commercial fishers on the Great Barrier Reef to catch 600 tonnes of sharks and rays each year. Among the sharks allowed to be caught are scalloped hammerhead and great hammerhead sharks – both of which are listed as endangered by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Under an international treaty, which Australia signed in 2014, those species of hammerhead shark were protected. But, two months after signing the agreement, Australia opted out of the protection of five shark species, including those two types of hammerheads.

The New South Wales government has independently passed legislation protecting both species of hammerhead sharks in state waters, saying they face a “high” or “very high” risk of extinction.



To determine the “maximum sustainable yield” that can be caught, the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries conducted a stock assessment of hammerhead sharks.

The assessment was mostly based on reports of how many were caught by fishers and concluded that more than 250 tonnes of each species could be sustainably caught each year.

But according to an independent peer review conducted by Enric Cortés from the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the data could not be used to infer sustainable catches.

Cortés said the “results were severely hampered by data limitations” and would produce “ineffective management advice”.

“The problem is that the catches are likely to be under-reported but assumed to be known without error,” his report said. In addition, the data on individual species was so limited that it cast “serious doubt on the results of the assessment”.

The review noted there was a small amount of good data collected during the operation of an observer program, which operated from 2006 until 2012 when it was axed.

“If the management authority is genuinely interested in assessing the status of shark resources, there has to be a serious investment in data collection,” the review said, recommending that the observer program be resurrected.

Simpfendorfer agreed, saying the observer program should be reinstated. “This is a fishery that operates in a world heritage area and it deserves a world-class data collection and management process and that’s really the bottom line here,” he said.

Kerrod Beattie, director of regulatory reform and consultation at the Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, defended the current quota, saying it was based on “the best available science”.

“The total allowable commercial catch for shark is set at what is considered to be a conservative level,” Beattie said. “The shark stock assessment predicted maximum sustainable yield estimates much higher than the current [total allowable commercial catch], even at the lowest possible confidence interval.”

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But Jim Higgs, WWF’s Great Barrier Reef fisheries technical adviser, said it wasn’t possible to know what level of take was sustainable for these sharks, since the historical and current data was based on such “dodgy data”.

Beattie said the department recognised that good-quality information was important for managing the fisheries. “The need to continuously improve data collection and validation is a priority for all of Queensland’s fisheries and this will be considered as part of a wider ongoing fisheries reform agenda.”

While actual catches of sharks and rays have been below the total allowable catch for several years, the catch almost doubled between 2014 and 2015 on the Great Barrier Reef, according to the limited available data.

In response to the jump, as well as concerns about dugongs, turtles and dolphins being caught in the fishing nets, WWF has bought and scrapped one shark fishing licence already and plans to purchase a second.

“By preventing both licences from returning to shark fishing we can save about 20,000 sharks each year, including endangered hammerheads,” said WWF-Australia’s conservation director, Gilly Llewellyn.