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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Contents Vol 59(5)

Contraction of the banana prawn (Penaeus merguiensis) fishery of Albatross Bay in the Gulf of Carpentaria, Australia

Jeremy D. Prince A C F , Neil R. Loneragan B C and Thomas A. Okey B D E
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Biospherics, PO Box 168, South Fremantle, Western Australia 6163, Australia.

B CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research, PO Box 120, Cleveland, Queensland 4163, Australia.

C Centre for Fish and Fisheries Research, Faculty of Sustainability, Environmental and Life Sciences, Murdoch University, South St, Murdoch, Western Australia 6150, Australia.

D Bamfield Marine Sciences Centre, PO Box 100, Bamfield, BC, V0R 1B0, Canada.

E University of Victoria School of Environmental Studies, PO Box 3060 STN CSC, Victoria, BC, V8W 2Y2, Canada.

F Corresponding author. Email: biospherics@ozemail.com.au

Marine and Freshwater Research 59(5) 383-390 https://doi.org/10.1071/MF07083
Submitted: 18 April 2007  Accepted: 27 February 2008   Published: 6 June 2008

Abstract

When the biomass and area occupied by a stock decline together, catch rates can remain high (hyperstability) and management with effort controls may be ineffectual. Banana prawn (Penaeus merguiensis) catches declined from 2000 until 2005 in the Albatross Bay area in the Gulf of Carpentaria (GOC), Australia. Data from commercial logbooks were used to investigate historical changes in the banana prawn fishery in this and other regions of the Northern Prawn Fishery to infer the potential causes of this decline. Data since 1970 were analysed using: (1) the mapping of catch and effort; and (2) normalised rank order catch curves, to determine the distribution of catches across fishing areas. These analyses show that there has been a marked contraction of the Albatross Bay fishery over 33 years of fishing into the centre of a stable ‘hotspot’, suggesting a potential mechanism for the observed negative relationship between catchability and biomass. We believe this is the first observation of a Peneaus prawn fishing ground contracting as biomass declines, supporting the view that the contraction of an area occupied by a stock as biomass declines, is a generalised phenomena observed widely across fisheries resources and not a dynamic confined to certain finfish and molluscs.

Additional keywords: catchability, hyperstability, penaeid, recruitment overfishing, shrimp, stock contraction.


Acknowledgements

The Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC) provided funding for the project Variation in banana prawn catches at Weipa: a comprehensive regional study (FRDC Project 2004/024). We thank all of the workshop participants and contributions from industry namely: Nick Laird, David Carter, Michael O’Brien, Greg Ferguson, Phil Robson and Tony LaMachia. We thank Toni Cannard for her assistance with the organisation of the workshops, Norm Hall for his data extraction wizardry and useful input along the way and Janet Bishop for responding to our many queries. Thanks to Bill Venables for developing the area index and to he and Peter Rothlisberg for providing comment and discussion on the manuscript. We thank Bill Venables also for producing Fig. 6, and Roy Deng for producing Fig. 1.


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