A Lacelin based shark fisher says there has been no commercial fishing in the West Coast bioregion between Lancelin and Tims Thicket (south of Mandurah) for nearly 20 years.

Speaking at a community fishing forum in Lancelin organised by The Nationals, Nils Stokke said a lot of people did not recognise or know that there had been “no commercial fishing – net fishing, wet fishing, a drop line or whatever you wanted to call commercial fishing in that part of the West Coast bioregion in all that time”.

The Western Australian Fishing Industry Council (WAFIC) also told Yanchep News Online back in December – shortly after the Cook Government announced the major changes to the demersal fishing industry – that the metropolitan area was a recreational-only fishery as there had had been no commercial fishing for demersal fish in the metropolitan area (part of the southern West Coast bioregion) since 2007.

Mr Stokke, who also partners with his brother in a western rock lobster boat, said he thought the ban was probably targeting the wet liners but they (the shark fishers) were thrown under the bus with them.

“And of course, the recreational side of things got the 21-month ban and none of us, commercially, knew what to think, what to say, because we were completely blindsided,’’ he said.

Prior to the government’s bombshell announcement that commercial demersal fishers including them would be permanently banned from the West Coast bioregion they had known some change was coming but he said commercially you would not find a better shark industry in the world.

“It’s so tightly managed with all its rules and regulations, we all thought, all right, we might have to cop a bit of a hit as far as a reduction in how much net you use, or whatever, to go hand in hand with helping the amount of fish taken out the water.

“But it’s a known fact that netting itself is only 0.04 (demersal caught in nets).’’

On January 23 he told Yanchep News Online that was using gill netting – where the nets were put on the bottom of the ocean for a set time – and not to be confused with drift netting.

In 2023 when the state government announced rule changes to ensure shark fins were left attached when fishers brought their catches back to port it said Western Australia’s commercial shark fisheries were sustainably managed

“In WA, all shark species are commercially protected and can only be targeted and retained in a small number of commercial fisheries, which provide an important source of local and affordable seafood,’’ the government statement said.

“Our temperate shark fisheries operate within the West Coast bioregion and South Coast bioregion and most of the fishers use demersal gillnets to specifically target smaller juvenile and sub-adult sharks and primarily catch dusky, sandbar, gummy and whiskery sharks along with small amounts of scalefish.”

In December WAFIC said commercial fishers in the West Coast area, which extends from Kalbarri to Augusta, had sold 240 tonnes demersal including shark in the WA market in 2024.

This compares with DPIRD’s Resource Assessment Report No. 2: West Coast Demersal Scalefish Resource 2025 assessment which said “total removals of demersal scalefish by commercial fisheries in the West Coast bioregion in 2024 (291 tonne) were well above the 240 tonne recovery benchmark in place for that year”.

Mr Stokke and other fishermen, including Adrian Lippi have said they are regularly required to submit their catch details so they don’t understand how the department and state government arrived at the “science” they used to formulate the fishing ban.

The Nationals leader and Mid-West MLA Shane Love and Opposition Fisheries spokeswoman and Geraldton MLA Kirrilee Warr said the community fishing forum in Lancelin was to provide affected fishers and local businesses an opportunity to be heard following the government’s demersal fishing bans.

There is an online petition asking the Legislative Council to call on the government to: 1. Establish a Parliamentary Inquiry into Western Australia’s fisheries to examine: The need for a clear, long-term plan for sustainable fisheries that supports all fishing stakeholders The impact of marine parks, renewable energy developments, illegal fishing, shark predation and other contemporary challenges on fish stocks and access. Whether the Department of Fisheries is adequately resourced to meet its responsibilities and 2. Commit to genuine and ongoing consultation with recreational fishers, commercial operators and other stakeholders before any major management decisions are made.

The petition, which had more than 31,000 signatures by January 25, closes on February 17.

In December the government said a new advisory council reporting to the Fisheries Minister would also be established and include members from industry, science and the recreational fishing sector.

This article appeared on Yanchep News Online on 25 January 2026.