Popular fishing grounds under pressure to protect cable

If you have been keeping your ear to the ground you may have heard of a proposal by the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) to implement a protection zone over a submarine data cable that runs off Perth.

For those of you who haven't, I bet you are asking "what does this cable do, why does it need protection and where is it located"?

This cable is one of many telecommunication cables linking Australia with the rest of the world. The submarine telecommunications cable in question carries voice and data traffic from Perth to South East Asia. Recfishwest is lead to believe that the cable leaving Perth carries approximately 2% of our total data traffic.

You may be thinking a small exclusion zone, restricting activities that impact heavily on the benthos as being a reasonable measure to ensure the protection of these cables. The very nature of the marine environment means that any disruption or damage to this cable could be very costly and time consuming. However, there is a lot more to this story than a simple protection zone.

So to the most important question, "where is it located"? It is this question that is of greatest interest to Recfishwest and why we are so concerned with this proposal. The area of the proposed exclusion zone runs through the most heavily boat fished area in the whole of Western Australia and proposes an exclusion zone of one nautical mile (1.85 km) either side of the cable from the low water mark out to a depth of 2000 metres. The cable tracks the back of the three-mile reef from City Beach to Hillarys before heading out to sea.

An exclusion of this magnitude for a cable with a double layer of reinforced steel seems excessive in the extreme. The risk that a recreational fisher could have on the cable, considering recreational boat anglers rarely use lines with breaking strains in excess of 40 kg, is seriously questionable.

Recfishwest has requested that the ACMA notify Recfishwest of the actual risk posed to this cable by recreational fishers. We have been asking what is the possibility of a fishing hook penetrating the cable or an anchor or pot becoming snagged and damaging the cable. To this point these questions have not been given a clear answer.

It is interesting to note that the submarine cable off Perth has been in place for 8 years without incident, nevertheless, the ACMA has deemed it appropriate that the cable now requires protection. It is hard to understand that if such a risk existed to this cable why it has been allowed to lie unprotected in our waters for such a long time.

Very few people would have actually even known that this cable was even present off the metropolitan coast, let alone its significance before this proposal was launched. It seems illogical to now place a huge target on these cables during this heightened time of terrorism.

Western Australia is not the only place that these cables leave the Australian coast, with the ACMA having also recently released a protection zone proposal for two submarine cables that depart the New South Wales coast off Sydney.

It is a shame that the ACMA didn't find it necessary to conduct a detailed risk assessment on the cable before it was laid or at least before the proposal for the exclusion zone was released. At the moment a number of the questions on the risk posed by each individual activity are purely speculative.
Some examples of the proposed restrictions in the WA exclusion zone include:

• Pots, traps, or gillnets cannot be set in waters beyond 500 metres from shore.
• Anchors cannot be set in waters beyond 500 metres from shore.
• Recreational fishers targeting bottom-dwelling fish cannot use wire line or J-hooks above size 4/0 in waters beyond 500 metres from shore

If you look at the map of the proposed exclusion zone in it is not hard to envisage the impact it will have on a number of commercial and recreational activities that commonly occur in that region. With the start of the new rock lobster season a few weeks ago I'm sure a lot of readers have just set their rock lobster pots in the hope of having a feed for Christmas. If you launched from the Hillarys boat ramp it is more than likely you have set pots within the proposed protection zone. How would you feel about not being able to do this next year?

Recfishwest has been invited as member of the ACMA WA protection Zone Advisory Committee to provide feedback on how the protection zone will impact on recreational fishers.

The Rock Lobster Industry Advisory Council (RLIAC) has also voiced their concerns with the proposed exclusion zone. This area is of high value to this industry with a large number of commercial operators potting in the proposed exclusion zone throughout periods of the rock lobster season. RLIAC have recently run a number of underwater filmed trials to present to the ACMA to prove that rock lobster pots provide no risk to the cable as they are pulled directly from the sea-floor with minimal drag. RLIAC tested the number of variations to rock lobster pots including the common plastic recreational pots.

Recfishwest does not dispute the importance of the cable, but question the risk that recreational fishers actually pose to the safety of this cable. There is still a lot of water to go under the bridge before this issue can be resolved, however, Recfishwest is hopeful that an equitable solution can be reached

The public has until 16 February to provide comment on the proposal and I recommend to everyone who fishes in the proposed exclusion zone to get onto the ACMA website www.acma.gov.au and following the links for more information on how lodge a submission. Recfishwest will be meeting with delegates from ACMA in early December and we hope that a number of our concerns regarding the proposal can be resolved.


Stop Press

The inaugural Recfishing awards recognising the contributions and excellence to recreational fishing were announced at an awards dinner in Brisbane on 4th November. Minister for Fisheries Senator the Hon Eric Abetz attended the dinner and presented the awards. WA was well represented in the nominations, being successful in the following two categories.

Best recreational enhancement project
"Restocking the Blackwood River Estuary" by Greg Jenkins
Recreational fishers were closely involved in the project. The project undertook an assessment of black bream in the estuary and determined that they were highly depleted. A total of 220,000 juvenile bream were cultured using over 100 brood stock captured from the Blackwood River and then stocked back into the system.

Best project or initiative encouraging women & young people's participation in fishing
"Recfishwest Sunsmart Fishing Clinic Program"
These Recfishwest initiated clinics have reached over 3,000 children in metropolitan and regional WA and have become an annual event. The clinic program encourages messages of sustainable fishing, respect for the marine environment and principles of catch and release. The clinics have been well received by the many local communities visited and have become a festival of fishing for many families.

Article written for the Hotbite Magazine, December 2006 issue
Written by Kane Moyle, Policy Officer, Recfishwest.



This page last updated on 17 January 2007.