Community & Livelihoods

When “overfishing” became the crisis of the 1970s, governments turned to market logic to save the sea. The Individual Transferable Quota promised order and sustainability, but instead it changed who could fish, who couldn’t, and who owned the ocean. The Birth of the Quota explores how a policy built on good intentions transformed an industry and the people behind it.

Ocean Kind in South Australia is proving that fishing gear recycling can make a real difference. By turning end-of-life ropes into reusable polypropylene, they’re keeping waste out of landfill and protecting our waterways from pollution. This is practical environmental action fishers can get behind.

Commercial fishing is being pushed out of local estuaries in the name of “protecting the fishery,” while charter boats, fishing media and tackle retail are celebrated. The public is told this is conservation. It is not. It is a handover. This story asks a simple question: who gets the estuary, the people who feed the community or the people who film the catch.

NSW commercial fishing licensing: price signals over paper. How NSW commercial fishing licensing has shifted to rigid caps and shares, choking estuary flexibility, while rec rules stay simple. Mulloway caps examined.

The Death of Generational Occupations