Fishing in the Coral Sea

The world’s oceans are in trouble. Fishery after fishery is collapsing due to industrial scale overfishing, combined with poor management by regulatory agencies.

Yellofin tuna – © Chris Fallows - OceanwideImages.comNinety percent of the world’s large ocean-going fish have been wiped out in the last 50 years. Overfishing of yellowfin and bigeye tuna is a major concern throughout the Central and Western Pacific. Even in the Coral Sea, where there is a commercial tuna and billfish fishery, both these species are in decline due to overfishing.

Over 100 tonnes of shark are taken each year from Australia’s Coral Sea as longline “bycatch”. The carcasses are landed and finned, and the fins exported to Asia.

And it’s not just fish that are affected by longlining.  Longline hooks set for tuna and billfish also catch seabirds and threatened sea turtles.

A second commercial fishery exists in the Coral Sea; the Coral Sea Fishery. The status of all stocks caught in this fishery is uncertain.

There is some very limited game fishing in the Coral Sea, however, game fishing for large and reproductively mature black marlin occurs mostly inside the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park, mainly between Cairns and Lizard Island. A fully protected park in the Coral Sea would offer a safe haven for large ocean fish, seabirds and threatened turtles.