Commercial fishing boats have now begun their season in the Abrolhos Islands Scallop Fishery, which, like prawn and scallop fisheries along other parts of the WA coast, is expected to provide significantly improved yields this year.
Department of Fisheries research indicates that, during the more than six weeks the fishery is likely to operate, around 2500 tonnes of scallops is estimated to be caught in the fishery.
Senior Research Scientist, Dr Mervi Kangas said the State’s major scallop and prawn fisheries had so far produced good yields in 2008.
“For example, the commercial scallop fleet operating in the Shark Bay fishery landed around 2750 tonnes of scallops in just over two months, before their season ended in early May,” Dr Kangas said. “The prawn fleet will add to this total as they will still catch scallops in the Shark Bay area later in the year.
“The better seasons were expected after research surveys we did in December last year showed very good scallop settlement.
“We do research in these fisheries to monitor sustainability and the surveys and predictions we do also enable skippers to fish efficiently – which is very important to them as they take higher running costs into account.”
Dr Kangas said WA’s major prawn fisheries had also been more productive, due to stronger recruitment that was identified in pre-season research surveys in March and April.
“Additional in-season surveys are undertaken to provide information about prawn size structure and quality and that helps operators optimise the take of prawns and thus increase value of the product,” she said.
“Tiger prawn landings in the Exmouth Gulf are estimated to be 400 to 600 tonnes, higher than the average annual landings of between 350 to 400 tonnes. Similarly, king prawn catch rates in our survey were higher, indicating a potentially better outcome than in 2007.
“A similar story is evident in Shark Bay’s prawn fishery this year, where catch rates of prawns in this year’s survey were about twice those of last year. This indicates the 2008 season’s prawn catches will be up on last year and the catches are forecast to be back to a normal range for this fishery of 1400 to 1800 tonnes of king and tiger prawns.”
