Commercial Fishing and the Fight for Our Estuaries

Commercial fishing is being pushed out of estuaries and inshore waters in the name of "protecting the fishery". The public is told this is about sustainability and looking after the resource for "the community".

What no one is saying out loud is this.

The fishers being pushed out are the only ones actually feeding the community.

Everyone else in this fight is still commercial. They just sell a different product.

We need to stop pretending this is conservation. It is a quiet handover of public water and public fish to a lifestyle industry.

Let us walk through it.

1. The word "commercial fishing" has been turned into a slur

The public has been trained to hear the phrase "commercial fishing" or "commercial fisher" and picture damage.

We get painted as the problem in the estuary. We are the ones "taking too much", "ruining the system", "stealing the fish from families". When there is talk of shutting down netting or trawling inside rivers and lakes, it is always sold as cleaning up the water, saving the nursery grounds, keeping fish there "for the community".

Here is the trick.

When they say "community", they do not mean everyone who lives here.

They do not mean the old bloke who cannot get in and out of a boat anymore but still wants local whiting for dinner. They do not mean the single mum who stops at the co op on the way home and buys a couple of flathead fillets for her kids. They definitely do not mean the pensioners who still remember when mullet season at Patonga was a town event, and the whole wharf smelled like salt and real food.

Those people do not count as "community" under the new story.

Now "community" means people holding a rod, people with a GoPro on the hat, people paying a charter to bag out, people burning fuel for lifestyle. That group gets cast as wholesome and "sustainable". The people in commercial fishing, who actually catch seafood so others can eat it, get cast as an environmental threat.

Government repeats that story on purpose. It gives them cover to shut working fishers out of inshore grounds while saying it is for conservation. It lets them turn public food fisheries into lifestyle parks without admitting that is what they are doing.

Here is the part that almost never gets said out loud.

The so called "bad commercial fisher" is the only one in that estuary who is actually feeding the public. The only one whose catch goes past their own family dinner table. The only one who has to document what they took, when, how, and from where. The only one who is required to report catch.

If you take fish to sell into the food chain with your name attached, you are treated like a criminal. If you take fish for content, stickers and sponsors, you are treated like local culture.

That is how cooked this conversation has become.

We are not the threat. We are the food supply.

2. Commercial fishing versus “recreational”: who is actually commercial here

There is a word game running in our fisheries. Recreational spokespeople, certain media personalities and even some ministers talk like "commercial fishing" only means one thing. They pretend it only means a licensed estuary fisher who sells fish to the public.

That is not honest.

Commercial means "done for money". That is it. Money changes hands. Someone profits. It is a business activity.

So let us line it up.

A. The working estuary fisher

This is the person with the licence. The person who runs mesh nets or hauls prawns or line fishes legally inside a managed fishery. They are under trip limits, size limits, gear controls, closures, reporting. Their catch is recorded. They have to prove they are sustainable because the system makes them prove it. If they stuff up, compliance hits them and hits them hard.

They are clearly part of commercial fishing. Everyone agrees on that.

They are also the only reliable way regular people can still eat local fish without having to own a boat or pay for a charter.

That part gets ignored on purpose.

B. The charter operator

A charter operator takes paying customers onto public water and charges them money for the experience of catching fish. The marketing is always the same. "We know the spots." "PB jewies." "Guaranteed action." "Fill the esky."

That is a sale. You are selling access to fish that belong to everyone.

Clients step off the boat with an esky of fish they paid to take. That is a commercial transaction built on public fish.

But when governments talk about "protecting recreational fishing", they count these boats as recreational. They hold them up as regional tourism. They call them "important for mental health". They do not call them commercial. They do not show them under "harvest".

Why not.

If I sell fish I caught, I am accused of stripping the estuary. If you sell people the chance to catch those same fish, you are called a tourism asset.

This is not biology. This is politics.

C. The fishing media machine

There is a whole media economy built off wild fish in public water.

Fishing TV shows. YouTube channels. Podcasts. Magazines. Social pages. Competitions. Branded shirts. Workshop days at tackle shops. "Meet the angler" nights at the pub sponsored by a sounder company.

They all sell product. Boats. Sounders. Electric motors. Rods. Lures. Soft plastics. Braid. Sunglasses. Electronics finance. Guided trips. Apparel. They push locations and techniques because it feeds clicks and views, and clicks and views feed sponsors.

That is commercial. One hundred per cent.

That is not someone quietly fishing off the bank with their kid.

That is a business model. It is fishing as content, and content as sales.

A lot of the loudest anti "commercial fishing" voices sit in this space. They tell the public that professional estuary netters and trawlers are destroying "our fishery". While they are literally filming the same fishery for clips and running ads on it.

They fish for revenue the same way we fish for revenue. The only real difference is where the fish ends up. Our catch goes into the community as food. Their catch goes into footage.

One of those is being legislated out of existence in estuaries. The other is being given VIP access and called "heritage".

D. The tackle and bait supply chain

Recreational lobby groups keep saying "recreational fishing is worth billions to the economy". The way they build that number is mostly retail spend. Boats sold. Outboards sold. Rods. Reels. Lures. Imported bait. Fuel. Accommodation. Marina fees. Charter trips. Clothing. Electronics.

So the pitch becomes this. Because we buy a lot of stuff, we deserve exclusive access to the inshore fishery.

Read that again.

Not "because we feed the state". Not "because our catch is essential protein for people who cannot fish". Because we swipe cards. Because we create turnover for boating and retail and tourism.

Imagine telling a farmer that his paddock needs to be shut down so a group can run 4WD tours and sell roof racks, and then telling him this is "for conservation of the land".

That is exactly what is happening in the estuaries.

The value claim that recreational groups lean on is not food security. It is not coastal food culture. It is not nutrition for locals. It is consumer spending. It is lifestyle branding. It is tackle shop receipts dressed up as public interest.

And government loves that story. You can stand next to a fishing personality on camera and talk about "regional tourism value". You cannot stand next to a haul of mullet and talk about pensioner nutrition and cost of living without inviting questions about supply chains.

So one story gets airtime. The other story gets buried.

3. The tourism dollar myth

Recreational fishing is constantly framed as an economic saviour. You will hear lines like "recreational fishing injects X billion dollars into the economy" and "recreational fishing supports Y thousand jobs in our regions".

Here is what those numbers mostly include.

Boat sales

Fuel

Outboards

Electronics

Accommodation

Charter fees

Imported tackle

Imported bait

Branded clothing

It is consumption spend. It is lifestyle spend. It is not food supply.

That "economic value" figure then gets waved around in front of ministers as proof that recreational fishing should be given first access to estuaries, rivers and lakes. That commercial fishing inshore should be shut down or pushed offshore. That public water should become recreational only.

They are saying this, directly:

Because we spend money on gear and fuel, we deserve to control this fishery.

That logic would not survive in any other sector.

You would not close a wheat farm because there is more money in four-wheel drive tourism photoshoots in the paddock. You would not tell dairy farmers to stop milking because Instagram likes are higher for "farm stay weekends".

But that is exactly how fisheries are being managed.

The purpose of an estuary is being turned from food production into branded experience.

It is not conservation. It is capture.

4. Food is a public interest

Millions of Australians eat seafood.

They do not all own a boat. They do not all have the balance sheet to buy sounders, electric motors, live wells and high-end rods. They do not all have every second weekend free to go and hunt jewfish at tide change.

They still count.

Local seafood is not a luxury item. It is how coastal communities have always fed themselves. It is part of affordability. It is part of health. It is part of culture.

When you push the working estuary fisher out of the system, you are cutting that off. You are not saving fish for the community. You are saving fish for a different class of harvester.

Right now, policy is drifting toward this position:

Fish caught for sale into the community is bad. Fish caught for personal content, guided extraction and sponsor reels is good.

The truth is the opposite.

Fish that go to the co op feed people outside the boat. Fish that go to YouTube feed the channel.

If we are going to talk about "public benefit", then food security has to matter more than click through rates.

5. The accountability gap

This is the part nobody who is anti-commercial will go near, because it exposes the lie.

Commercial fishing and local food fishers

• Must report catch

• Must record effort

• Must log where, when and how

• Operate under trip limits, size limits, gear restrictions, spatial closures, seasons and harvest strategies

• Can be inspected on the water and on the ramp

• Can lose their licence if they breach

Recreational fishing, including paid charters and content fishing

• Often does not have mandatory real time catch reporting

• Can fish intense weekend and holiday pressure on the same stock without anyone actually logging total take

• Can high grade and handle stressed fish for photos and call it "released" so it does not count

• Faces very little consequence when total removals from a system climb into genuine commercial scale

Now look at who gets blamed for "declining fish numbers" whenever there is a campaign to kick someone out of the estuary.

Not the unmeasured side.

Us.

The group with mandatory reporting, independent review and harvest strategies is the group being told it is "uncontrolled and destructive".

The group with almost no formal catch accounting is the group being handed exclusive access to estuaries in the name of "sustainability".

Say that out loud to a normal person. Watch the face they make.

6. Who gets the estuary

This whole fight comes down to one question.

Who gets the estuary.

Is it a working water that feeds Australians, run under reporting, limits, science and traceability.

Or is it a lifestyle park for paid charter operators, tackle retailers and fishing media personalities who make money off the same fish, but do not have to admit they are commercial.

Right now governments are moving us toward the second model. Quietly. Estuary by estuary. Closure by closure. They use language like "protecting nursery areas" and "restoring balance for recreational fishing families" so that most people clap without looking at what it actually means.

What it means is this. Public fish are being reassigned away from the dinner table and toward the camera.

7. Stop calling this conservation

Anti commercial campaigns are always dressed up as conservation. "Save the fishery." "Let the stocks recover." "Protect the system for future generations."

Here is the real shape of it.

This is not about leaving fish in the water.

This is about deciding who gets to take them out.

If I take a feed of estuary prawns and sell them to 40 local households, I am called destructive.

If a charter boat takes four paying clients to the exact same prawns and every single one of them fills their legal bag limit and posts a photo of the esky, that is called a great day on the water and proof of a healthy system.

If a TV host catches and releases ten big breeding fish in a row for a segment and then runs six sponsor tags across that footage, that is called responsible.

If I catch one of those same fish, ice it humanely, sell it to a family that cannot fish, and record that catch against my licence, that is called unacceptable.

This is not science. This is about which form of extraction the government prefers to be seen standing next to.

We have reached a point where filming yourself catching a fish for clicks is considered responsible use of a public resource, but catching that same fish to feed your town is treated like an environmental crime.

That is upside down.

Closing

Here is the choice.

We can keep letting government and recreational lobby groups say "commercial fishing is the problem", while they quietly hand public fisheries to charter operators, tackle retailers and fishing media who are just as commercial, but with friendlier branding.

Or we can say it clearly.

Food is not the enemy. Local fishers are not the enemy. Feeding people is not the enemy.

The only reason this industry is being pushed off its own water is because someone else wants what it catches.

Call it what it is. This is not conservation. This is reallocation.