Moreton Bay Bug

• Commonwealth Northern Prawn Fishery (45t in 2016)

The term ‘Moreton Bay bugs’ refers to two species, the reef and mud bug, both found throughout subtropical and tropical waters around Australia. Bugs are caught in a Commonwealth-managed trawl fishery that mainly targets prawns. The stock structure of either species of bug is poorly understood and no stock assessments have taken place. The stocks are partially protected by management measures such as non-retention of ‘berried’ or egg-bearing females and a restriction on the amount that can be caught.

Bugs are caught using otter trawls that operate mainly over mud and sand. Otter trawls operate over the seafloor when targeting tiger and endeavour prawns. This has the potential to cause significant habitat disturbance. Habitat types affected and are fairly resilient to disturbance and tend not to support sensitive marine communities, however, relatively little of the areas in which these fisheries operate is protected in spatial closures or marine parks.

Bycatch reduction devices (BRD) and Turtle Exclusion Devices (TEDs) reduce the amount of threatened and other species that are caught and killed in fishing gear. BRDs and TEDs are mandatory in all these fisheries and have been successful in reducing turtle deaths. However, threatened species bycatch remains an ongoing issue.

Catches of sea snakes remains high, although there is no indication that sea snake populations are declining as a result of fishing activity. Endangered sawfish, including the IUCN listed ‘Critically Endangered’ green and ‘Endangered’ dwarf sawfish are also caught every year, although it is complex to design modified fishing gear to reduce sawfish mortalities because the shape of their rostrums means they are especially prone to entanglement. The fishery has robust and transparent management arrangements in place, including observer programs, requirements to reports discards, assessments of the risk of the fishery to threatened species, plans in place to successfully reduce bycatch, and management actions in place to rectify issues in the fishery, should they occur. It is likely that these management arrangements will maintain the progress of these fisheries to reduce their impact on endangered wildlife in the future.

Commonwealth marine parks, set to be established in 2018, may provide a degree of protection for endangered species and marine habitat, though it is notable that sectors of industry sought, and may secure, significant reductions in the area of the fishery protected from trawling.

• QLD: East Coast Trawl Fishery: (489t in 2020, 515t in 2019)

The term ‘Moreton Bay bugs’ refers to two species, the reef and mud bug, both found throughout subtropical and tropical waters around Australia. Bugs are caught in trawl fisheries that mainly target prawns. The stock structure of either species of bug is poorly understood and no stock assessments have taken place. The retention of ‘berried’ or egg-bearing females is allowed, which has been prohibited in other fisheries to protect the stock. While management measures do not appear robust enough to protect the stocks of bugs and catch rates have been declining in recent years, Great Barrier Reef Marine Park closures are estimated to protect around half of the stock of both species, ensuring a significant degree of resilience from potential overfishing.

In QLD, Moreton Bay bugs are caught as a byproduct in a trawl fishery that targets multiple species of prawns and scallops. The fishery operates within and around the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park.

This fishery has a high level of discards and it is concerning they are not required to be reported. The most recently available data estimated 25,271t of discards in 2014, compared to 6702t of retained catch in the same year. Moreton Bay bug catch is associated with fishing targeting a seriously overfished species, the saucer scallop.

New evidence has shown that the Queensland stock of saucer scallops is at 15% of historic levels, meaning it is overfished. Queensland fishery rules state that a fishery should be closed when a stock is below 20%, and yet one area of this fishery off Fraser Island and the southern Great Barrier Reef remains open. Even low levels of scallop bycatch associated with fishing for Moreton Bay bugs would negatively impact the recovery of the stock.

Independent fishery observer programs are an important method of verifying protected species interactions, as well as other fishery impacts, such as the type and volume of discarded catch. Unfortunately the QLD Government has closed the observer program for all QLD managed fisheries in 2012. In the intervening six years, there has been no independent on-vessel monitoring of the impact of the fishery, which is unacceptable for fisheries operating in the ecologically sensitive regions of the Great Barrier Reef. Concerns have been raised regarding under-reporting of endangered species caught in the fishery in logbooks. Since there is no record of actual protected species interactions over time, the ecological impacts of this fishery cannot be measured or managed.

The fishery will be required to resume an independent observer program by 2024, likely to be based on e-monitoring. While it is welcome, the program should be implemented sooner. This and other reforms currently underway in the Queensland fishery have strong potential to improve the GoodFish ranking of this seafood option if implemented quickly and effectively.