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00.02.45.00

Debbie Whitmont:

Two months ago a light plane flew south from Tasmania toward an unmarked patch of ocean.  The water should have been deserted, but it wasn't.  Shrouded by clouds were some unwelcome visitors.  Four huge trawlers were fishing in one of Australia's most valuable and fragile fisheries.

02.53

Joe Pirello, Fisherman, South Tasman Rise Trawl Association:

Opportunists, poachers, pirates I see them as, the people who wouldn't hesitate to destroy a resource for a couple of lousy dollars.

03.19

Geoff Diver, Scientist, South Tasman Rise Trawl Association:

They're coming in with no view at all on sustaining the fishery - they're doing a lightening raid, coming in, harvesting it and going.

03.32

Debbie Whitmont:

Australia's ocean territory is one of the biggest in the world, and our fisheries could be some of the richest, but now as the world's fish stocks dry up, foreign fleets are targetting Australian fisheries.

03.44

Joe Pirello, Fisherman, South Tasman Rise Trawl Association:

We could have got in front of them, we could have cut their nets off.

04.00

Frank Meere, Managing Director, Australian Fisheries Management Authority:

We think that they were sort of playing cat and mouse with us a bit.

04.02

Margi Prideaux, Australian Conservation Foundation:

We've shown ourselves, Australia has shown itself to be a toothless tiger.

04.05

Debbie Whitmont:

Tonight on 'Four Corners' the story of how foreign fishermen raided a fishing ground on the edge of our territorial border and how neither law nor diplomacy was able to stop them.

04.10

Title:             Sea of Trouble

04.23

Debbie Whitmont:

Forty kilometres off the Tasmanian coast CSIRO researchers are preparing to take a close look at a world few humans have ever seen.  This year for the first time Australian engineers have developed a camera strong enough to be dragged across the ocean floor and film deep under water.

04.40

Dr Nick Bax, CSIRO Marine Ecologist:

It's like another world down there, really.  It's as exciting to us biologists going down to these depths and taking the camera down and seeing what it actually looks like, as it is to astronauts that set foot on the moon.

05.17

Debbie Whitmont:

Nearly a kilometre below the boat as the camera scrapes over the rocks, it's throwing out the first light this underwater world has ever seen.  The orange fish here are called Orange Roughy, and some of them could have been swimming here undisturbed since the last century.

06.07

Dr Nick Bax, CSIRO Marine Biologist:

Well Orange Roughy is obviously a very old fish.  It doesn't mature until about 30 years old.  It can live perhaps to 150 or even older, and the average age of a fish in the fishery might be about 60 years old.

06.36

Debbie Whitmont:

This sea bed is so deep that red light usually doesn't penetrate, so down here the Orange Roughy are usually almost invisible, and until recently that camouflage has been enough to protect them.  But in the last 20 years the world's fishing industry has discovered Orange Roughy, and it's found that deep-living and mysterious fish is boneless, bland and perfect for freezing.  Orange Roughy is now the most popular dish on American dinner tables, and it's become one of the world's most fragile resources.

06.55

Geoff Diver, Scientist, South Tasman Rise Trawl Association:

It's a resource that we don't get a second chance on.  If a resident Roughy population is overfished chronically, it means you know, you've got a lag of half a century at least for it to bounce back.  So it's a resource we have to treat very carefully.

07.38

Debbie Whitmont:

Australian scientists are still trying to discover exactly how long Orang Roughy live and how they breed.

08.05

Alan Williams, CSIRO Fisheries Scientist:

Estimates really vary upward from about 75 years, so a fish of this size was probably spawned let's say around the time of the First World War.  It's been swimming around at these depths for a very long time.

08.14

Debbie Whitmont:

Orange Roughy spawn in the same place each year, usually around the rocky sides of underwater hills.  For several weeks thousands of tonnes of fish will cluster tightly together.  It makes them an easy target, and it's meant that all over the world when breeding grounds have been found, fishing has boomed - and then busted almost as quickly.  In Australia the gold rush began a decade ago when the first breeding ground was found at St Helens off Tasmania.  For two seasons dozens of trawlers were queuing up, dropping their nets and filling them in minutes.

08.30

Brett Startup, Skipper:

Well St Helens, there was no limits in the early days on how many boats could fish it.  It was just open slather and everybody just went as hard as they could - filled up, went back, filled up, went back.

09.28

Geoff Diver, Scientist, South Tasman Rise Trawl Association:

The fleet size went up to a point where I believe there were 60 odd boats fishing in the St Helens area through the spawning aggregation.

09.40

Debbie Whitmont:

The catches were so huge that nets broke and processing plants couldn't work fast enough.  Soon thousands of tonnes of Roughy were being dumped.

09.52

Man at tip, dumping truck full of Roughy:

You take a photo of me and I'll jam the camera up your arse.

10.02

Debbie Whitmont:

St Helens taught a tough lesson and it forced major changes.  These days the Australian Roughy industry is one of the most highly regulated in the world.

10.06

Geoff Diver, Scientist, South Tasman Rise Trawl Association:

We've learnt from St Helens, we've learnt from other grounds, so we're going flat out to keep this, to make this a sustainable resource.

10.28

Debbie Whitmont:

But now Australia's resolve to keep its fisheries sustainable is being threatened.  In the last two years a new Roughy breeding ground has been discovered just over 200 nautical miles south of Tasmania.  It's called the South Tasman Rise and it could be one of our richest fisheries, but the problem is that the South Tasman Rise cuts right across Australia's territorial border.  It makes the Orange Roughy what is called a 'straddling stock', and that puts the fish into a new and grey area of international law - an area where Australia can regulate its own fishermen but can do very little against outsiders.  And already the outsiders are rushing in.  This year, on the last day of June, Australian fisheries inspectors were setting out to investigate a rumour.

10.42

Joe Pirello, Fisherman, South Tasman Rise Trawl Association:

We were informed that these vessels possibly were on their way over.  They had left South Africa and they were heading for the Australian fishing zone.

Q:      Informed by whom?

A:       Some New Zealand industry operators.

11.46

Debbie Whitmont:

For the last two years the new fishery has been jointly managed by an agreement between Australia and New Zealand, with the bulk of the catch going to Australia.  But both countries had agreed to close the ground during the spawning season.  By the end of June it should have been deserted, but it wasn't.  Right on top of the breeding hill and just four nautical miles outside the Australian border were three 80 metre trawlers.  Two of them were floating factories, and the three together could probably catch and process about 18 million dollars worth of fish - twice Australia's annual quota.

12.07

Frank Meere, Managing Director, Australian Fisheries Management Authority:

Here we had set up arrangements with the New Zealand government and had managed both our fleets very carefully - particularly our own fleet which we had had off the fishing grounds for some time - and to find another set of countries in there fishing this stock that we were trying to manage in a precautionary way was quite, quite annoying.

13.03

Debbie Whitmont:

The trawlers seemed to be trying to keep a low profile.

13.26

Frank Meere, Managing Director, Australian Fisheries Management Authority:

We moved to identify the vessels, and we did that through a process of using established registers, and using the call signs on the boats.  They weren't flying flags so we didn't know where they were from by the nature of the flag that they were flying.

13.33

Debbie Whitmont:

It took Australia a while to establish that the boats were South African, and South African authorities were surprised that they were fishing incognito.

13.50

Dr Denzel Miller, Marine & Coastal Management, South African Fisheries:

I think it would be provocative to say the least.  There may be reasons why the flags weren't being flown - I don't know.  I mean, the middle of July - South Tasman Rise - the flags could've blown away.  In terms of the law there is no reason that the flags were not flying.

14.05

Debbie Whitmont:

A flurry of diplomacy started up between Canberra and Capetown. After a few days the South African government accepted that the fish straddled Australia's border and that Australia was managing them.  It told the trawlers to leave, but they didn't.  Far from leaving, a third South African trawler joined them.

14.30

Frank Meere, Managing Director, Australian Fisheries Management Authority:

There was a bit of loitering, as I called it at the time - they seemed to not want to leave.

14.58

Dr Denzel Miller, Marine & Coastal Management, South African Fisheries:

I talked a lot on my cell phone, particularly to my counterpart in Canberra.  We equally, we screamed at each other, we shared each other's frustrations, we threatened each other - we did all the kind of things that friends can do.  We obviously kept, tried to keep our governments, as far as we could, in the loop.  I mean there were things that we obviously said to each other that could not be said at government level.

15.08

Frank Meere, Managing Director, Australian Fisheries Management Authority:

Q:      Why do you think they didn't just go immediately?

A:       Well clearly there's a large investment in having sent these vessels thousands of miles across the ocean from South Africa to the southern tip of Australia, and clearly the people involved wanted to have some fish on board to be able to justify, in financial terms, the trip.

15.35

Geoff Diver, Scientist, South Tasman Rise Trawl Association:

Well it's, you could make the fairly easy interpretation of their behaviour is that any day, any one day you can delay some final ruling is a good day, is potentially worth another 300,000, half a million.

15.58

Debbie Whitmont:

Grounded in Hobart, Australian fishermen calculated that the South Africans only needed two or three weeks to fill up their trawlers, and time was ticking away.  The local Orange Roughy fleet fishermen wanted to go out and confront the raiders.

16.21

Joe Pirello, Fisherman, South Tasman Rise Trawl Association:

We could have got in front of them, we could have cut their notes of, we could have done whatever was necessary to protect our resource.  It's an Australian resource - it needs protecting.

16.40

Debbie Whitmont:

But the government told them to 'stay home' - the Australians had already caught their annual quota, and to them the fishery was closed.

16.51

Brett Startup, Skipper:

Oh, I wasn't very happy.  We've got a quota of a couple of thousand ton there.  Each of those boats can carry that.

17.01

Brian Cooksley, Skipper:

I wasn't impressed at all, not at all.  After what we've gone through we've got to sit at the wharf basically and starve while these guys are down there.  They're taking the fish from under our nose basically.

17.08

Hamish MacGibbon, Skipper:

Over that three week period they, those three boats from South Africa could've caught four and a half thousand ton.

Q:      More than twice the quota?

A:       Twice the annual quota that yeah, New Zealand and Australia had.

Q:      What do you think that would do to the fish stock there?

A:       It would have a serious effect on it - we still haven't got enough research in to know what size the fishery is.

17.17

Geoff Diver, Scientist, South Tasman Rise Trawl Association:

The other point is they are there right on the spawning, the time the fish spawn, so you're taking that biomass out of your spawning stock which then has the knock-on impact of recruitment in future years.  If you could effectively disrupt the spawn enough that you don't have any effective, any recruitment in the fishery.

17.40

Debbie Whitmont:

After two weeks Australia's diplomatic pressure seemed to be going nowhere.  Day after day the government sent out surveillance planes, and day after day the trawlers claimed they were leaving.

18.04

Margi Prideaux, Australian Conservation Foundation:

South Africa requested that the boats stand off, to my knowledge, four times.  Four times they moved off the grounds and four times at least they came back.  I don't think they were paying attention, or I don't think they were taking the warning seriously.

18.21

Frank Meere, Managing Director, Australian Fisheries Management Authority:

We think that they were sort of playing cat and mouse with us a bit because they seemed to be moving away from the spot where the fish were occurring during the day, but we had no idea what they were doing during the night.

18.38

Debbie Whitmont:

South African authorities didn't know either.  The trawlers' compulsory satellite position monitors didn't seem to be working.

18.54

Dr Denzel Miller, Marine & Coastal Management, South African Fisheries:

The satellite monitor didn't work, yes.

Q:      Did that strike you as odd?

A:       Suspicious.

19.03

Debbie Whitmont:

It took an RAAF Orion with night vision cameras to catch them red handed.  Under cover of darkness they'd steamed back to the fishing ground and they were fishing.  By now the South Africans had spent nearly three weeks in the fishery.  The next day they headed west.  It turned out that the three trawlers that had so stubbornly ignored all Australia's requests were owned by a major multinational in Capetown.  Irwin and Johnson, or I & J, is one of South Africa's biggest and oldest fishing companies, but these days I & J is under pressure - local fish stocks are dwindling.

19.15

Dr Denzel Miller, Marine & Coastal Management, South African Fisheries:

It's become clear that within the South African waters most of the sources are essentially pretty nearly fully subscribed if not close to being over-subscribed, so the more adventurous companies, and there are a number - I mean I & J is what, probably one of the biggest - but there are a number of smaller companies that have had to look elsewhere.

20.11

Debbie Whitmont:

When 'Four Corners' contacted I & J its Trawling Manager told us that his company hadn't done anything wrong and that its boats left eh area as soon as they were asked to.  But a few hours before a scheduled interview for this program I & J pulled out.  The same manager said he was concerned that the interview might not go as planned.

20.32

Dr Denzel Miller, Marine & Coastal Management, South African Fisheries:

Nothing I & J did in terms of our regulations, in terms of our law, was incorrect.  They made an application for a high seas fishing licence, it was granted, they went out and fished, and they had done everything correctly.  The licence was valid and therefore they hadn't done - in terms of our domestic law - anything wrong.  The interpretation, of course, comes after.

20.53

Geoff Diver, Scientist, South Tasman Rise Trawl Association:

What I make of it is that this is an out and out money making venture just a, you know, blatant disregard for the ecology of the area, the resource.

21.34

Frank Meere, Managing Director, Australian Fisheries Management Authority:

Q:      What's your feeling about their comment that they didn't know they were doing anything wrong?

A:       Again, you know, I can expect, I guess I could expect that as being an immediate response, but the point is that they knew exactly where to come fishing and they knew exactly what to do, and so I suspect they knew that there was an arrangement in place.

21.37

Debbie Whitmont:

I & J also knows Australia.  Every year it sells more than 50 million dollars' worth of frozen food to Australian supermarkets.

22.00

Joe Pirello, Fisherman, South Tasman Rise Trawl Association:

Well I think if the Australian consumers were aware  of what these companies are doing, companies like I & J, they would consider choosing other brands of product in favour of them.

22.14

Debbie Whitmont:

But the South Africans haven't been the only ones to raid the new Orange Roughy fishery.  Another country did the same thing a few months before them, and to add insult to injury, that country was supposed to be Australia's partner in managing it.  All over the world New Zealand fishermen are known for their particular expertise in catching Orange Roughy, and they're known for the money they've made doing it.

22.31

Barry Weeber, Forest & Bird Society, New Zealand:

Without Orange Roughy there wouldn't be deep water fishing in New Zealand.  It's basically paid off boats, it's paid off processors, it's paid off the crew, you name it.  It's educated the industry, it's done everything that's required for us to not only do it in New Zealand, but also move offshore to Australia and to South Africa.

23.05

Debbie Whitmont:

But New Zealand's Orange Roughy fisheries are drying up, and New Zealand fishermen are being forced to look further afield for new opportunities.  It's no coincidence that many of those opportunities lie on fishing boats from southern Africa.

23.28

Frank Meere, Managing Director, Australian Fisheries Management Authority:

It seemed strange to us that these vessels were able to come to the very spot where these fish were.  There was no general exploration up and down the edge of the Australian fishing zone to find the spot - they were able to come straight to the spot and to start fishing, and to us that said one of two things.  Firstly, they either had been provided with information that gave them that location, or they had on board somebody who had fished there previously.

Q:      And where would that information, or that person, be likely to have come from?

A:       Well clearly from one of the companies or the nations which were part of the agreement.

23.47

Debbie Whitmont:

Right from the start the agreement Australia and New Zealand made to manage the fishery has been riddled with tension.  Each side accuses the other of overfishing, and New Zealand doesn't even agree that the fish really straddle Australia's border.

24.27

John Luxton, Minister for Fisheries, New Zealand:

I don't think I've seen a paper in front of me that suggests that it is a straddling stock.  There have certainly been some claims, but no research that I'm aware of.

Q:      So you don't accept that it's a straddling stock?

A:       No, I don't, it's, I'm not saying that.  I'm saying that I haven't seen any research that indicates to me that it's a straddling stock.

24.47

Warren Truss, Minister for Fisheries, Agriculture & Forestry:

Well Mr Luxton doesn't have much science on his side in that case.  It is clearly a straddling stock, and all of the research that's been done, including some that was commissioned as associated with the development of this memorandum, have clearly identified that it is a discrete, but a straddling stock.

25.03

Debbie Whitmont:

What New Zealand fishermen really want is more than their current one quarter share in the new fishery.  Earlier this year when New Zealand demanded a half share in the fishery, Australia refused and the agreement lapsed.  The fishery became a free for all.  Three New Zealand companies rushed in and took about 8 million dollars' worth of fish - more than three times their country's annual quota.

25.23

John Luxton, Minister for Fisheries, New Zealand:

The arrangement expired and the New Zealand fishing fleet went in.  And there was no arrangement, so there was no figures that were required for either industry to be kept within.  There was no quota there, it was, the arrangement has expired, so it was open international waters.

Q:      But that's not really in the spirit of sustainable fishing?

A:       Well it wasn't because we hadn't got agreement finalised from the Australian end.  We'd put up a proposal and we were getting very close to finalising it, but it hadn't been finalised.

25.54

Warren Truss, Minister for Fisheries, Agriculture & Forestry:

We were very disappointed at that action.  We're disappointed New Zealand was so slow to rein in the actions of their fishing fleet in that regard, and we have certainly raised that in the discussions that we're having with New Zealand about the new memorandum.

26.29

Frank Meere, Managing Director, Australian Fisheries Management Authority:

Q:      What does that say about the way companies in New Zealand regard the agreement with Australia?

A:       Well again I have to, you know, say that I can't speak for how they view the question of sustainable fish stock management, but they obviously have different views about what is and isn't sustainable.

26.44

Joe Pirello, Fisherman, South Tasman Rise Trawl Association:

Their fisheries management are probably the most hypocritical fishery managers I've ever seen in my life.  They don't hesitate to do whatever they need to do to protect stocks within their own zone, but they close their eyes to the plundering of stocks which they're supposed to help manage in other countries' zones.

27.04

Debbie Whitmont:

The Australian fishermen were furious.  They had kept to the spirit of the agreement while the New Zealanders ignored it.  When the I & J boats arrived two months later, the fishermen were convinced there was only one way the South Africans could have found their way to the fishery.

27.37

Geoff Diver, Scientist, South Tasman Rise Trawl Association:

The fish aggregate around one hill, one reasonably small hill.  So they've managed to come out of say South Africa and make a hard turn to port, steam for several days, several thousand nautical miles, and land on top of the spawning hill - like there's only one spawning hill in the South Tasman Rise.  They have managed to come all that way and be over the spawning hill as the spawning season's getting under way.

Q:      How do you explain that?

A:       I suspect, well I suspect, yes, that somewhere along the line they've been given information on how to get there.

27.57

Brian Cooksley, Skipper:

Q:      If you had to guess where the prior knowledge had come from, where would you guess?

A:       Oh, certainly from operators that are in South Africa from New Zealand, for sure.

Q:      Why do you say New Zealand?

A:       Well New Zealand's got a big effort over there in the industry as well, so that involvement through them, joint ventures and the likes of that, and I mean word of mouth.  Like I said, it's not hard for it to travel, and everyone's keen to make a dollar these days.

28.42

Debbie Whitmont:

The question of how the South African boats knew, with such pinpoint accuracy, where to find the fish, is now the subject of major investigations in New Zealand, South Africa and Australia.  And all three countries are particularly keen to speak with one New Zealand skipper who left Wellington and flew to Capetown shortly before the boats headed off to Australia.  They aren't finding it easy - six weeks after the boats left the fishery, two of the three are still at sea, and I & J isn't saying who's on them or how many fish they caught.  New Zealand is now trying to pass laws putting stricter control on its skippers, but New Zealand and Australia still have to negotiate a new agreement.

29.05

Warren Truss, Minister for Fisheries, Agriculture & Forestry:

Q:      How can we trust New Zealand?  How can we negotiate with them?

A:       Well it is very important that every negotiation be built on trust.  You can't have an agreement unless countries agree to undertake their responsibilities and to live within the rules of that agreement.  We will expect that of New Zealand in the future.

29.52

Joe Pirello, Fisherman, South Tasman Rise Trawl Association:

I don't think these countries, and some of these countries and some of these companies, are concerned about diplomatic results.  I think that their prime objective is to make a profit and to return a dividend for their shareholders, and that means catching fish.  And if you can catch fish without quotas and unregulated, some of these companies will do it.

30.11

Debbie Whitmont:

But South Africa and New Zealand haven't been the only ones to target the South Tasman Rise.  A fourth trawler came fishing in the shadow of the South Africans, and it showed just how little Australia can do to protect its new fishery.  Six weeks later the boat is still hiding somewhere in the Tasman and we don't even know who it's working for.  Just about all we do know is that it's called the 'Sureste' and it's registered in Belize in Central America.

30.39

Frank Meere, Managing Director, Australian Fisheries Management Authority:

Unlike the South Africans where they came and went a little bit, the Belize boat just stayed there and fished.

31.19

Margi Prideaux, Australian Conservation Foundation:

Q:      Why would someone flag their boat in Belize?

A:       To escape their nation state's regulation - that's what flags of convenience are for.

31.26

Debbie Whitmont:

For more than two weeks the 'Sureste' fished away, oblivious to a stream of urgent messages from Australia.  This time Australia asked Belize to give it a power to arrest the boat, but by the time Belize agreed the 'Sureste' - and its load of fish - had disappeared.

31.42

Frank Meere, Managing Director, Australian Fisheries Management Authority:

To our knowledge that boat hasn't made land fall anywhere - it's been in the Tasman Sea and up to the north end of the New Zealand economic zone, but we don't know.  We weren't able to, we haven't been able to follow it intricately.

32.04

Jeff Williamson, Titanic Ice:

If you've established a complex network of international companies, and you register boats in Belize under one of your complex parts of your company, it's not difficult to mask that, the trail, as to who owns a boat.

32.23

Debbie Whitmont:
Jeff Williamson calls himself the 'Iceman of Hobart.'  He's an ice trader, fish dealer and part-time researcher for environmental groups keeping tabs on the fishing industry.  Williamson knows all about tracing fishing boats when the trails behind them go cold.

32.42

Jeff Williamson, Titanic Ice:

Fishing companies which are involved in things that are a bit suspect will often have many boats of a similar nature with similar names, registered in different places.  So it's not a terribly hard thing to, you know, use a can of paint to change the name, or change a couple of letters in the name, or to change the identify from this boat to that boat, or the flag of this boat to the flag of that boat.  So in essence, a company with multiple boats, multiple registrations, multiple names, it's not a difficult thing.

33.02

Debbie Whitmont:

Australia may not know where the 'Sureste' is going, but it isn't difficult to work out where it came from.  For the past two years the 'Sureste' has been a familiar sight in the South Island of New Zealand.  In June traders in Littleton stocked it up with a good supply of duty free beer and cigarettes.  Its crew said it was going, quote, 'to sea.'  But the 'Sureste' is even better known further south in New Zealand - in Timaru, or at least it used to be.  Now it seems to be the boat that no one wants to know about.  In fact the 'Sureste' is one of four boats with the same name.  All four are managed by a Korean company called Dong Nam, and for two years all four have been chartered to a New Zealand company called Veinso.  The two companies work in the same office.

33.38

Murray Williamson, Veinso, New Zealand:

The 'Sureste' 707, 707 and 700 are fishing in New Zealand under charter to Veinso, the company which I manage.  The 'Sureste' is not under charter to us as of the 10th of June.

Q:      And do you know where it's gone?

34.46

Debbie Whitmont:

But strangely, though both companies know all about three of the 'Sureste's, they don't know anything at all about what's happened to the fourth one.

35.03

Mr Park, Dong Nam, New Zealand:

Q:      And so who is chartering it now?

A:       I said that vessel was chartered to some company of Hong Kong.

Q:      A subsidiary of Dong Nam?

A:       No.  (laughs) Yeah.

Q:      I think you did say that?

A:       Bloody very good guess, huh?  You only guess.  All right.

Q:      But it is a subsidiary of Dong Nam, isn't it?

A:       OK, OK, OK.

35.12

Jeff Williamson, Titanic Ice:

Jeez, I mean, it's not hard.  I mean these people are in the business of sort of treading a very fine line.  So they're quite adept at creating a smoke screen, and there's plenty of methods you can do it.  And so, you know, once you create the smoke screen, then at diplomatic levels it becomes very difficult to unravel it.

35.38

Frank Meere, Managing Director, Australian Fisheries Management Authority:

These structures are put in place precisely so it makes life difficult for us, and we will do our best to find out who are behind the interests and how it's being operated, but I can't say with any confidence that we'll get to the bottom of this - we'll certainly try.

35.59

Joe Pirello, Fisherman, South Tasman Rise Trawl Association:

Well we're in deep trouble if we can't track down one old fishing trawler.  We have a problem, eh?

36.14

Margi Prideaux, Australian Conservation Foundation:

What we need to remember in this instance is that it doesn't matter who took the fish - the fish are gone.  We've had vast quantities of fish removed from the water in a very short space of time, at the time that hey were breeding.  It's going to be devastating for the fish in the long term.

36.20

Debbie Whitmont:

Four years ago, on the other side of the world, another country had problems much like Australia's with a straddling fishery, and that country was forced to take desperate measures.  After centuries of unrestricted fishing the richest fishing ground in the world, for Northern Cod, had completely collapsed.  Canada had to ban its own fleet from fishing and it began to patrol international waters in an effort to protect the few remaining fish that straddled the border.  In 1995 Canadian coastguards caught a Spanish trawler fishing in international waters.  They fired shots, arrested it and brought it into Newfoundland under armed guard.  Canadian fishermen cheered, but the European Union called it an act of piracy.  Four years later it still hasn't been decided by a court whether Canada was acting legally.

36.48

Frank Meere, Managing Director, Australian Fisheries Management Authority:

It's still under legal challenge, what they did.

Q:      But they got rid of the Spaniards?

A:       They did, and they raised an enormous diplomatic incident.

38.11

Debbie Whitmont:

Some lawyers argue Canada was justified.

38.19

Don Anton, Environmental Defenders' Office:

Canada was within the bounds of its rights to exercise unilateral action.  Sure, it was protecting local fisheries, just as Australia would be entitled to protect its local fisheries by acting under the doctrine of necessity.

38.22

Joe Pirello, Fisherman, South Tasman Rise Trawl Association:

My understanding is that Australia has a real onus - the onus is on the Australian authority to protect our resource.  And that's a straddling stock and the Australian industry and government have been working together to protect the stock, and I think we have an obligation to protect the stock.

Q:      Did you expect them to do something when they heard these South African boats were on their way?

A:       Oh yeah, I certainly expected the Navy or surveillance vessels to be out there and doing whatever we can to keep the bastards off our grounds.

38.37

Frank Meere, Managing Director, Australian Fisheries Management Authority:

At international law these vessels were on the high seas.  We sought legal advice and the legal advice clearly said to us that we didn't have powers that we could exercise outside the Australian fishing zone in relation to these boats.

39.11

Don  Anton, Environmental Defenders' Office:

Well, I mean it is one legal view, but I do think there are legal grounds that would justify unilateral action on the part of Australia to protect this straddling stock.

39.25

Margi Prideaux, Australian Conservation Foundation:

We've shown ourselves - Australia has shown itself - to be a toothless tiger.  We haven't acted swiftly and quickly to protect the stock.  We paid far too much heed to diplomatic sensitivities when we should have been going out and making some strict, decisive action on the spot with fleets. We didn't do that, and I think that's to our long-term detriment.

39.37

Debbie Whitmont:

Canada's action did warn off the Spaniards and others, and it pushed the United Nations to speed up a treaty on protecting international fisheries.  But four years later many countries haven't signed on and the treaty still isn't in force.  It could be years away.

40.05

Warren Truss, Minister for Fisheries, Agriculture & Forestry:

Well it would be, of course, better if the international agreement had been done many, many years ago, but these priorities are dealt with in international negotiations.  They all have a history of taking a very long time because we're asking many countries of the world to adopt higher standards than in the past.

40.26

Dr Denzel Miller, Marine & Coastal Management, South African Fisheries:

The question of responsible fishing basically comes down to the nations that, who believe they are responsible, trying to make the rest of the world responsible along with them, and that is the issue, and that's very difficult.

40.46

Debbie Whitmont:

In Hobart the 'Saxon Progress' is coming home from a fishery inside Australian waters.  It's been using part of its quota to help researchers assess the size of the fishery.  At the wharf the two people meeting the 'Saxon Progress' are both scientists.

41.04

Brian Cooksley, Skipper:

Q:      So how was the trip?

A:       Yeah, very, very good.  Weather was fine, fishing was good.  I can't complain at all.

Q:      What's the catch like?

A:       Around about 85 to 90 ton of Orange Roughy.

Q:      And is that good?

A:       That is good, yeah.

41.24

Debbie Whitmont:

By world standards the Australian industry is small and old-fashioned.  Even the biggest trawler in Hobart is little more than half the size of the South African fish factories.  For the Australian industry, sustainable fishing is the only future.

41.45

Hamish MacGibbon, Skipper:

This area's absolutely essential to the Roughy fleet in Hobart surviving, and to lose that now would really be another backwards step for Australian trawl fishing.

Q:      What would it mean for the fishermen?

A:       Find a job somewhere else probably.

42.06

Brian Cooksley, Skipper:

Q:      Do you think this is a one-off and it's over and it was a diplomatic victory?  Do you feel confident about that?

A:       Not a 100% no, because of the failing fisheries around the world, and with people with large vessels - they'd have to try and maintain them and service them and make money from them.  No, I think there's still a threat from other countries or other operators, for sure.

42.22

Debbie Whitmont:

It's little comfort to our fishermen that an international treaty might eventually solve their problems - one of their most vital fisheries is already disappearing.

42.44

Geoff Diver, Scientist, South Tasman Rise Trawl Association:

The major concern we have at the moment is we don't have the luxury of time, and if it takes five or six years to sort this out, we will have the great victory in five or six years' time where we can point to the South Tasman Rise and say, 'If that fishery was still there, it would be ours.'

42.58

Debbie Whitmont:

Australia has a vast ocean territory and no way of regularly policing all of its borders.  For now the Australian government is relying on international good will and cooperation to protect our resources, but as recent fishing raids show, there's no guarantee of either.

43.21

Ends: 00.44.25.00