The NSW government has not yet decided if the prohibition of one year of fishing in Blue Groper will end

When the oldest prime minister of NSW dobsted on Sydney Clovelly beach and found himself face to face with a huge, thick and huge blue fish of PEG, an icon was born.

It was said that the Groper of the Eastern Blue inspired Bob Carr to make the species the official state fish in 1998.

Curious and friendly, the Gropers often roam delighted divers and are particularly meek on beaches like Gordons Bay and Bronte.

But it is that lovely to have led them to problems, with the spectators of the beach in horrified chronulla last year when a man left the water that transported a great huge groper affectionately known as Gus, which he had illegally launched.

The Minns government’s response was fast. A complete prohibition of fishing species, even by line fishermen, was implemented for at least 12 months.

Recreational fishermen had accused the government of scoring political points on the issue without seriously investing in conservation, while scientists warn that there was no way of knowing if the species is in decline.

With the trial that will end in March, the Department of Primary Industries of NSW (DPI) does not have a scientific metric to assess whether the prohibition has been successful, and the government had not made a decision on whether it will continue.

The DPI confirmed that an evaluation of shares was being completed and published at the end of this year, but did not confirm when the last count with which it could be compared.

Confused fishermen report Gropers’s abundance

The ban was received with confusion by fishermen who had been fishing Groper for more than 50 years and said the population was abundant.

The DPI had traditionally listed the species as a shot not based on sustainability, but in the case of Groper, there was no way to assess whether the population was in abundance or decrease.

There is no current stock count of the fish, which has not been counted since at least 2018, and the last research work published publicly on the health of the population was published in 1997.

The Nath Burns fishing guide has been catching Eastern Blue Groper for 30 years in Sydney, Eden, and as north as Yamba.

He has seen the Lollipop population, but said he had never seen Groper numbers in as much abundance as at this time.

“I am in favor of conservation and protection, but fisheries need some data to base their decision, instead of only an instinctive reaction,” he said.

Burns stopped taking Groper years ago, but until the ban came to the place he practiced capture and liberation. Many of his clients come specifically to catch the great fish.

The Gropers present a unique challenge when they hook, diving to get into a cave, which makes it almost impossible to bring them back.

“As sports fish, they value them,” he said. “They throw like a cargo train.”

It would support a permanent policy without taking if fishermen could catch and launch for sport.

Ostracted ‘recreational fishermen for the prohibition

The president of the NSW Stan Konstantaras recreational fishing alliance said the “blind” prohibition of his community.

People in their local fishing club in South Sydney participated in a labeling program in 2005 to help the department better understand how they move to the Gropers, but Konstaras warned that the prohibition had severely damaged confidence between fishermen and DPI .

“It is really difficult for us to involve our members or even those interested to participate in any investigation when they have told us that our whole life should be based on evidence, but then we obtain a warm and confusing argument around the blue Gropers,” . saying.

Many are concerned that the prohibition establishes a precedent that could be extended to other types of fish.

A DPI spokesman for Nueva Wales del Sur said that “interested parties and the community in general” had been consulted about the prohibition, but that a decision on the future of the trial had not yet been made.

With just over two remaining months of the prohibition, 19 people have been accused of crimes related to Groper in Nueva Wales del Sur.

That compares with 36 in the report period from 2022 to 2023 and 31 in the report period from 2023 to 2024.

Without research, scientists can only guess

While the species recovered after a prohibition of spear fishing in the 1960s, remains listed as “almost threatened” by the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (ICUN).

There are research that show traditional habitats for youth spots, which tend to live in estuaries such as the port of Sydney, had slowly disappeared in the last 100 years.

Chris Pine, a doctoral candidate at Sydney University who studies fish communities, said that although a fishing ban could be a useful preventive strategy, it was not enough.

Pine said that traditional DPI protections, such as the boundaries of the bag or length, cannot protect the Gropers, which tend to have a small home range, usually a radius of approximately 100 to 500 meters.

That means that even a UNO bag limit could tithe a population if multiple fishermen take from the same place.

“Combining that with its complex life story and its complex management, along with the fair general decrease of our marine ecosystems, one might expect that they are probably more threatened than when that last scientific study was conducted,” Pine said.