The State Government has started crackdown on illegal dumping at sea. South Australia’s commercial prawn fishers are supporting this drive. Fishermen, artificial reefs are on the increase in Spencer Gulf, and they’ve become concerned about safety. According to fishery officials last week they caught a boat loaded with what appeared to be rubbish, to dump as an artificial reef to attract snapper.
Greg Palmer, from the Spencer Gulf and West Coast Prawn Fishermen’s Association, says it’s very dangerous when a net gets entangled in a man-made reef. He told that in prawn fishing they had to trawl the bottom and thus encounter these objects such as car bodies, fridges, trailers, tanks, anything. This causes a lot of damage, a lot of grief, and in some cases, it can actually cause serious injury to someone, and on top of all that it’s a very big financial burden to fishermen. Officials informed that anyone found carrying foreign material in their boat in South Australian waters can be fined up to $10,000.
