Australia's Most Recent Nobel Laureate Calls for Increased Scientific Input in Determining Governmental Policy. (September 17, 2012)

Citing the recent redetermination of federal governmental legislation as it applies to the Australian Fisheries Management Authority and in particular as it pertains to the 140 meter long super trawler FV Abel Tasman, Australia's 2011 Nobel Laureate in Physic, Brian Schmidt told The Australian: "I think it highlights how important it is for the politicians and the public to have trust in the scientific evidence. That clearly has broken down in this case over the last couple of weeks and my message is we need to fix it and restore trust in the Australian Fisheries Management Authority as fast as possible. That is the key message out of this case."

According to The Australian's Joe Kelly Professor Schmidt believes politicians would be better informed if they hired more scientists as their advisers and greater use was made of independent bodies such as the Australian Academy of Science to source advice.

Professor Schmidt went on to say:  "I would like to see a structure put in place where whenever appropriate, the government has essentially independent and quality advice that they can use. We don't have really a whole-of-government approach. For example, the UK has science embedded in every department."

But in this particular case according to the Australian Fisheries Management Authority the quota determined to be appropriate for the super trawler in order to safeguard fish stocks was supported by expert advice from "CSIRO and other scientific bodies".

So is it the case that the advise given to the AFMA was in fact inexpert or that although correct the handling of informing the public and in particular the stakeholders in the nation's fishing industry during negotiations was handled abominably?

And just in passing, was the Office of the Chief Scientist asked for assistance?

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Several reports have appeared in the media criticising Environment Minister Tony Burke’s moves to ban the super-trawler

Abel Tasman (the re-named Margiris).

 The comment below was in response to a request from the Australian Science Media Centre ()AusSMC)

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Professor Jessica Meeuwig is research professor in the UWA Oceans Institute at University of Western Australia

The science case for the super trawler is weak in that it rests largely on the point that the quota is conservative in that it represents 7.5% of the biomass (population size in weight) and that this is well below the 20% recommended for “forage fish”.

As a scientist, I would argue that this is problematic for two reasons:

     (1) The species to be targeted are NOT typical “forage fish” species to which the recommendations apply. If you look at the data on the life history of these animals, they are larger, live longer, grow slower, feed higher up the food chain, and are thus fundamentally less resilient to fishing. So I don’t think we know if 20% or even 7.5% is precautionary for these species.

     (2) Estimates of the total biomass are missing for a number of the species / regions. In these cases, given we don’t know how many are out there, it is difficult to determine whether the quota in fact represents 7.5% of the biomass. If the biomass has been overestimated, as suggested by Wadsley, the quota would represent a much larger component of the biomass and the degree to which this is sustainable is UNKNOWN.

I note also that precautionary principles form the Forage Fish Task Force, which has been cited as support for the trawler, also include spatial closures and no new fisheries where uncertainty is high, as is the case here. So even if these species are forage fish, we are ignoring other important scientific recommendations from the Task Force. And to be clear, the scale of this vessel’s capacity qualifies it as a “new fishery” given its ability to exploit areas not yet fished and the nature of the gear.

The science has also been a bit murky around what the trawler quota actually represents in terms of fishing mortality. Those scientists supporting the trawler state that the quota (the amount of fish you are allowed to take) has been at this level for a few years, so the Margiris/Abel Tasman doesn’t represent an increase in quota. That is technically correct. But what it does represent is a 10x increase in real fishing mortality – ie the amount of fish that are actually landed. Prior to this vessel, the Australian fleet landed, in the last few years, about 10% of the quota. Given ABARES says that these species are in good condition because they are fished at low levels, we don’t know how they will respond to a 10x increase in REALISED fishing mortality, which the Margiris is capable of achieving. Thus it is an experiment.

I would also note that the economists are now commenting on how these increased capacities don’t make environmental sense (my point) they also don’t make economic sense.

Finally, localised depletion is an important topic. I note that there has been little evidence provided on the population structure of these animals. There is a presumption that fish form big mixing populations thus localised removals aren’t a problem as more fish will “recruit”, either as adults or as young, to any depleted area. With increasingly sophisticated techniques, we are finding that fish have much greater population structure than previous thought, thus increasing the risk of localised depletions in the face of high efficient super trawlers.