Western Australians love two things: arguing about politics and arguing about fishing — and not necessarily in that order. I’ve worked in both worlds. Years ago, as a staffer to a Fisheries Minister, I sat through countless hours of briefings from scientists, policy officers, recreational groups and commercial operators across WA’s 46 managed fisheries. Nothing is as complicated — or as combustible — as fisheries management. Recreational fishers bring passion, commercial operators bring lawyers, and everyone brings the certainty they’re right.
Amid all that noise, one thing has stayed constant. Every two years the State of the Fisheries Report quietly sets out which stocks are stable and which are under pressure. And the same pattern keeps flashing red: the fisheries closest to large populations are the ones struggling most.
From West Coast demersals to metro abalone and Cockburn Sound crabs, the story hasn’t changed in 40 years. The race has always been to reduce catch faster than population growth increases fishing effort — and WA keeps losing.
Just look at the numbers. Perth had 600,000 people in 1970, 900,000 by 1980, 1.3 million by 2000 and 2.4 million today. We’re heading toward 3.4 million by 2050. Every extra resident who buys a rod adds pressure to slow-growing species like dhufish and snapper.
In the 1970s, the West Coast demersal fishery was the Wild West. No bag limits, no boat limits, no closed seasons and barely any licences. Recreational boating exploded as fibreglass boats became affordable. By the 1980s scientists were warning of trouble, but regulation lagged years behind reality.
It took until the 1990s, before the first real controls appeared. Demersals were classified high-risk, Cockburn Sound rules tightened, and late-decade research confirmed what many suspected: dhufish stocks were severely overfished. That set up the major reforms of the 2000s. By 2007, commercial fishing was capped, and in 2010 recreational rules finally toughened — two-fish limits, boat limits, gear controls and seasonal closures. It was the first serious attempt to halve mortality.
Yet here we are, more than a decade later, and the biomass of key demersal species remains stuck below the critical 30 per cent threshold. Every intervention has been swallowed up by population growth and faster, more powerful technology. Bigger boats, better motors, electric reels, and sonar that can virtually identify the fish before the hook is wet. Effort reduction simply hasn’t matched effort expansion.
The maths is unforgiving. Every extra 100,000 Perth residents means roughly another week of closures just to keep biomass steady. Add a million people and you’re talking ten extra weeks. And because a week of summer fishing does four times the biological damage of a week in winter — calmer seas, longer days, more spawning activity — the most politically convenient closures tend to be the least biologically effective.
Then there are the behavioural spikes. Announce a closure and thousands of boats hit the water in the days before and after. Pressure doesn’t disappear — it relocates. Many simply tow north or south and hammer areas that had been holding up. The fishery doesn’t get a break; it just gets chased around the coastline.
If this were a commercial fishery, the State would have acted far more decisively. When the rock lobster fishery faced collapse in 2007, then-Fisheries Minister Norman Moore made one tough call: he halved the catch overnight. No polling, no warm-up act, no political gymnastics. He took the scientific advice, held the line, wore the outrage — and saved the fishery. Today it’s one of the best-managed lobster fisheries in the world.
The demersal fishery needs its Norman Moore moment — urgently. Fifteen years of half-measures have seen population growth outrun every rule change. Ministers keep adding a few more weeks of closures and trimming bag limits, but the stock isn’t bouncing back. Nature doesn’t pause while politics catches up. Right now, the fishers are filling their bags and the fish are paying the price.
We need a broader, braver conversation about what recovery actually takes. Other fisheries around the world use every tool available — rotational closures, spawning-zone protection, slot limits, gear changes that improve survival, real-time effort alerts, restrictions on peak-day ramp access, even long-term shutdowns. These aren’t radical ideas; they’re standard practice in places serious about rebuilding stocks.
And with WA’s population surging, these tools will become essential. If we want our kids and grandkids to catch dhufish and snapper anywhere near Perth, the large, old breeders — the egg factories — must survive.
Catching them slows recovery; protecting them accelerates it. It really is that simple.
Which brings us to the present. Fisheries Minister Jackie Jarvis has already shown she’s willing to take tough regulatory decisions — from mandating pain relief in animal husbandry to requiring electronic ear tags so the State can respond rapidly to a foot-and-mouth outbreak. Both were controversial, but both were taken in the long-term interest of the industry.
She now faces a similar moment on the West Coast. The word on the water is that serious cuts — even long-term shutdowns — are on the table until stocks rebound. The commercial sector will share the burden, but they’ve been heavily regulated for years with strong catch data. The recreational sector is where pressure has grown fastest and the catch rate is poorly understood.
For WA’s 700,000 recreational fishers — and the smaller group of high-tech, big-boat hunter-killers — the next round will be blunt, unpopular and long overdue.
If the Minister follows the science in her department rather than the politics on the boat ramps, she could be remembered as one of the few Fisheries Ministers who genuinely put fish ahead of votes — and ensured the next generation inherits more than empty ocean and stories of how good the fishing used to be.
Related story: Can Captain Jarvis navigate without at polling compass?
