I’ve stood on the bridge of the Fisheries portfolio before, watching the charts, reading the soundings, and warning the captain that reefs lay ahead. As a former Chief of Staff to a Fisheries Minister, I recognise the signs when a government vessel starts taking on water and the crew pretend it’s just spray over the bow. WA is again steering toward the same rocks: science shouting from the crow’s nest, lobby groups whispering on the bridge, and politicians tightening the sails to catch votes instead of heeding the compass. Now Captain Jackie Jarvis has the helm. We will see whether she keeps a steady course guided by evidence or follows her predecessor into the shallows of cheap populism and political drift.

For decades, WA’s fisheries have not been steered by science but by timidity. Ministers of all stripes have run before the political wind rather than hold a sustainable course. The pattern is always the same: the department brings the charts and the science, the Minister nods gravely, then heads to the cockpit to be talked out of action by mates, lobbyists and the weekend-boat brigade. When politics wins, fish lose.

Western Australia has one of the world’s best fisheries science crews — over a hundred specialists producing hard data every two years. Their logbooks have warned repeatedly of collapsing stocks: lobster, scallops, abalone, blue swimmer crabs, snapper, dhufish. Yet year after year ministers have ignored the science and announced the usual “balanced outcome” — political code for doing as little as possible while hoping the ocean quietly refills itself. It hasn’t.

The latest 2025 assessment reads like a shipwreck report. The West Coast demersal fishery is now so depleted it may need a full-scale closure lasting years. Dhufish down 85 per cent. Snappers in similar straits. This is not rough seas — this is the hull breached and the pumps struggling.

The Greens have seized the wheel federally and demanded the simplistic fix of locking up 30 per cent of waters into marine parks— the “30-by-2030” mantra. But locking the chart room door does not steer the ship. Marine parks without catch discipline just cram fishers into smaller grounds and increase pressure. You don’t stabilise a boat by forcing all the crew to stand on one side.

Slow-growing fish. Nutrient-poor waters. More people. Better fishing technology. Bigger boats. Same resource. It’s not complicated: restrict effort or crash the stock. We already know closures work — our metro abalone fishery runs for just four hours a year and survives because of it. Meanwhile rec fishing still runs on an honour system and a tape measure, leaving floating fish in the wake. No commercial operator would keep quota records like that and expect to stay licensed.

Nine out of ten baldchin groper and three out of four dhufish are taken by recreationals. Yet recreational groups demand the commercial boats be booted out of “their” waters. That hands the resource to the elite rich who inhabit the first class cabins and have access to the 24 ft Noosa Cat for their entertainment.  In the meantime the rest of the crew are told to eat salted imported basa? 

Commercial fishing has been barred from Perth waters for 17 years, yet the dhufish numbers keep sinking. What does that signal to the Minister at the wheel? That maybe it isn’t trawlers scuttling the stock off Mandurah to Lancelin — it’s us weekend warriors sounding the depths with ever-better boats, sounders and reels. The science puts dhufish biomass in the metro strip at about seven per cent of historical levels. That’s not longliners dragging the bottom. That’s recreational pressure, pure and simple. And if the West Coast demersal commercial quota — all 240 tonnes of it — were magically handed over to recreational anglers tomorrow, it would barely move the dial: at roughly 2.4kg a fish, that’s about 100,000 fish, or roughly one extra snapper-sized fish each for those who head out. One fish. In exchange, the rest of the population loses local fish in the shops and watches the price rise. That’s not a bounty. That’s a political sugar hit for the well-heeled with boats at the expense of everyone fishing from the beach — and everyone who doesn’t fish at all. If the Minister is serious about rebuilding stocks, a token two-month closure may need to become a 12 month closure, not a postcard policy.

Mind you, the refusal to trim sails and cut the catch over the past eight years now leaves Captain Jarvis staring at the prospect of shutting the entire West Coast zone for years. That is not bold reform, that is salvage work after the last crew ignored the charts and ran the boat aground. When ministers reject the department’s science, the bill arrives later in the form of full closures and angry voters.

And here is the hypocrisy that rankles the crew on deck. On climate science, ministers stride about in white coats declaring the evidence sacred. Yet when those same scientists say nuclear is safe, the lab coats are quietly folded away and suddenly the “science is uncertain.” Believe the science — but only the convenient parts. In fisheries, that selective navigation has brought us to shallow water. This time, the Minister either follows the plotted course or accepts responsibility for the wreck.

We did the same with forestry — ignored the science which said we had a sustainable resource at the current rate of harvesting, but Labor shut the industry anyway, now we import timber from the same place we import our basa. The federal government did the same with live exports — ignored its own departments’ animal welfare science and surrendered markets to nations with worse practices. We are flirting with doing it again on nuclear to respond to climate change — fear campaigns embraced, the lights flicker while policy pretends batteries and hope will do the job.

It seems that when fisheries, forestry, livestock or nuclear scientists speak, suddenly the pollster’s notebook appears. Believe the science, we are told — but only when it suits the tribe.

Which brings us — again — to Captain Jarvis. She recently said “every management option is on the table.” Good. But so far, we’ve seen more signalling than steering. The Greens offer more marine parks as if drawing new lines on a map magically grows fish. They mistake cartography for management.  It will only work if the whole ocean is locked up, mind you I suspect that’s what they are working towards.

We have seen a minister follow the science before. His name was Norman Moore. In 2009 he halved the rock lobster quota, imposed time closures, and faced down outrage from all quarters. Result? The lobster stock rebounded, prices surged, pot values soared and the industry endured. He tightened demersal rules too. Hard calls, clear compass, calm seas later.

Since then? Drift. Two Labor ministers, Kelly and Punch, ignored the department, chased votes, and drove the fishery toward the sandbar. Both sank politically. Fish sank with them.

Now Jarvis stands at the wheel. She can follow the soundings and take the pain early or she can wait until the hull groans and water pours in. There is no third option.

Fisheries is the hardest portfolio in government. The sea does not negotiate. Biomass is non-partisan. Ignore it and you end up lurching between panic closures and compromised decisions that kick the problem down the road.

If Jarvis holds the line on science, she deserves promotion to Admiral. If she trims her sails to appease the loudest voices at the boat ramp, she joins the long list of ministers who traded fish for votes and left the ocean emptier than they found it.

So yes, here we go again. Science on the chart table. Political hands on the tiller. Eyes on the polls instead of the horizon. If this government chooses to run aground, history will record that the lighthouse was working — they simply chose not to look.