Commercial Fisheries

Commercial fisheries management covers the licensing, management, research, assessment, monitoring and compliance specific to commercial fishery activities.  These include the licensing of fish dealers, importers, fish farmers and harvesters of freshwater fish species.

Wild Fisheries

The short-finned eel (Anguilla australis) forms the basis of a commercial fishery in Tasmania with an annual catch in the region of 45 tonnes. This is a limited entry fishery comprising of 12 commercial fishing licences with some 30 fishers seasonally employed in the industry.

The catch is largely exported as frozen product to Europe, and live product to Asia with some value added product (mainly smoking) destined for the local domestic market. Each of the 12 licence holders has a discrete area to fish. The main capture method is fyke nets, and some downstream trapping of migrating adult eels is also undertaken.

Tasmania has the most significant juvenile eel migrations within Australian waters in terms of quality and relative predicability. Dams obstruct these upstream migrations.  The Service undertakes annual harvesting and elver restocking programs, therefore, to promote recruitment into Tasmania's rivers and lakes, thus ensuring the continued sustainability and commercial viability of Tasmania's eel fishery. Large aggregations of juvenile eels returning to freshwater are trapped at Trevallyn in the North and Meadowbank in the South and are used for restocking rivers and lakes to support the wild fishery and also for use in experimental culture trials.

With an increasing demand for juvenile eels to support a rapidly expanding eel industry, Australian and overseas interests are seeking access to Tasmania's juvenile eel resource. The Service makes available a proportion of the annual harvest to these interests by direct negotiation and public tender.

Aquaculture and fish farms

The Service has a responsibility to facilitate and encourage fish-farming in Tasmania, while ensuring adequate safeguards for the freshwater environment are implemented and maintained. The major interest in this area relates to applications to farm salmonids, eels, goldfish and tropical fish.

Any fish farming proposal that is put forward goes through a rigorous assessment procedure involving consultation and approvals from various Government authorities.  There is a coordinated process for reviewing applications that ensures each application meets high and consistent standards in relation to land and water usage, environmental impacts, disease control etc.

In particular the IFS assesses:

• effects on recreational trout fisheries, including access to these fisheries
• effects on migratory fish
• effects on freshwater fauna
• possibility of fish escaping

The Service opposes any loss of existing trout fisheries and does not permit privatisation of public waters for this purpose. Similarly, grow-out of farmed fish in public access inland waters has not been permitted. The Service believes that a properly controlled fish farm does not pose a risk to Tasmania's fisheries.

Private Fisheries

The IFS has responsibility for the regulation of freshwater private fisheries in Tasmania. Private fisheries provide a source of employment and income as well as relieve the pressure on Tasmania's public fisheries.

All private fisheries are bound by the following requirements:

the development must not involve any public waters and must be entirely within privately owned property the development must not impinge on any public fisheries fees are charged by the IFS in lieu of licence fees owners are free to develop and regulate the fishery as they wish within certain limits as specified in each operating licence owners may chose which species of fish they want and can purchase them at commercial rates from registered farms. Brown trout may be purchased for private fisheries only from the IFS. Disease control provisions are the same as for fish farms all necessary planning, environmental, and water requirements also apply.

Aquarium Industry

The Service has responsibility for the regulation of the aquarium industry in Tasmania. This includes the registration of all importers and premises, as well as the prohibition of fish that are capable of living and breeding in the natural waters of Tasmania, including fish and freshwater invertebrates.