THE 113-DAY LOCKOUT - THE GHOST FLEET

Patonga NSW

Throughout this series, we have unpacked the absurdity of the NSW commercial fishing weekend ban. We have looked at the broken history, the “Double Regulation” of Mother Nature, and the market distortion that forces you to eat older seafood.

But if you strip away the biology, the economics, and the meteorology, you are left with one burning question: Who exactly is the government trying to control?

The weekend ban was designed in the 1980s to manage a booming, chaotic industry. It was a tool to control a fleet that was visible, loud, and everywhere.

But that industry no longer exists.

Today, the NSW Department of Primary Industries is regulating a Ghost Fleet. They are applying “crowd control” measures to an industry that has been decimated by decades of reform, buy-outs, and attrition.

The Vanishing Armada

To understand the scale of the change, you have to look at the numbers.

Thirty years ago, the NSW coast was dotted with commercial boats. In the 1980s, you could stand on a headland on the South Coast and see “Beach Haul” crews working multiple beaches. You could look out over the estuaries and see a thriving fleet of small family trawlers.

That world is gone.

Through successive waves of government reform—including the “Commercial Fisheries Business Adjustment Program”—the fleet has been slashed.

• In the Ocean Haul Garfish sector: There are not hundreds of boats. There is no “armada.” According to industry data, there are only 3 or 4 major dedicated operators left in the entire state who hold enough entitlement to work the season properly.

• In the Hawkesbury: The prawn trawl fleet is a shadow of its former self, reduced to a core group of professional, multi-generational families.

The Death of the Clarence Fleet

The situation is even more dire in the north. The Clarence River, once the powerhouse of the NSW prawn industry, has just been dealt a fatal blow.

After struggling through a two-year shutdown due to White Spot disease detections, the fleet has now been hit with a new five-year biosecurity control order. This order effectively sinks the remainder of the fleet.

These were family businesses that supplied a massive volume of NSW’s fresh prawns. Now, they are gone. The few boats that remain are locked in a bureaucratic stranglehold that makes viability impossible.

So when the government says they need weekend bans to “manage conflict” with the fleet, we have to ask: What fleet?

The reality is, on most weekends in winter, you could scan the entire horizon of the South Coast and not see a single commercial boat. Yet, the few of us who remain are legally banned from working, just in case we cause a “conflict” with a ghost that isn’t there.

The Great Wall of Red Tape

The weekend ban implies that without it, we would be running wild, doing whatever we want.

This is the most insulting myth of all. The weekend ban doesn’t exist in a vacuum; it sits on top of a mountain of other restrictions that already dictate every move we make.

We are hemmed in by three rigid walls: Gear, Geography, and Effort.

1. Hemmed in by Gear

We don’t just use any net we find. Our gear is scientifically designed to be selective and low-impact.

• Mesh Sizes: We are strictly regulated on the size of the mesh to ensure juvenile fish escape.

• Net Lengths: We are limited in how much gear we can put in the water.

• By-Catch Reduction: In the Hawkesbury, our trawls are fitted with sophisticated exclusion devices to ensure we catch prawns, not fish. We cannot simply “fish harder.” Our tools are capped.

2. Hemmed in by Geography

The public often thinks we can fish anywhere. In reality, the map of NSW is a minefield of “No Go” zones.

• Marine Parks: Vast tracts of the best fishing grounds are locked away in sanctuary zones (Bateman’s Bay, Port Stephens, Jervis Bay).

• Recreational Fishing Havens: As we discussed in Part 2, huge areas of productive water (like Lake Macquarie, St Georges Basin, Botany Bay) have been stripped from us entirely to create exclusive playgrounds for recreational fishers.

• Biosecurity Zones: As the Clarence River disaster proves, entire river systems can be wiped off our map overnight.

• Zoning: We are often restricted to specific regions. A South Coast garfisher can’t just steam to Sydney if the fish move.

3. Hemmed in by Effort

This is the big one. The Ocean Haul fishery is “Effort Managed.” This means we are strictly limited in the number of days we are allowed to work in a year. We purchase “effort days” or “shares” that entitle us to a specific amount of time on the water.

This system was designed to be the primary control. The logic was: “If we limit the days they can work, we limit the catch, and the stock is safe.”

So, if we are already limited by the number of days we can use, why does the government also dictate which days we can use them?

If I have 50 effort days on my license, it makes zero biological difference whether I use one on a Saturday or a Tuesday. The impact on the stock is identical. The only difference is that by banning Saturday, the government forces me to burn my effort days during bad weather or poor markets, rather than when the job actually pays.

The Final Straw

When you stack these restrictions up, the weekend ban is revealed for what it is: A redundancy.

• We are limited by Gear (so we can’t catch too much at once).

• We are limited by Geography (so we can’t fish sensitive areas).

• We are limited by Effort (so we can’t overwork the year).

• We are limited by Nature (so we can’t work in bad weather).

Adding a calendar ban on top of this is not management; it is harassment. It is a “belt and braces” approach where the government is wearing a belt, braces, using a piece of rope, and holding its pants up with its hands, just to be sure.

The Proposal: Let Us Work

We are not asking for a revolution. We are not asking to roll back Marine Parks or scrap by-catch devices. We accept the need for sustainability. We are the custodians of the resource, and no one has a bigger stake in the health of the ocean than we do.

We are simply asking for the removal of a dinosaur regulation that serves no purpose in 2025.

The Solution is clear:

1. Scrap the Blanket Ban: Remove the statewide weekend and public holiday closures for the Ocean Haul and Estuary Prawn Trawl sectors.

2. Target the Conflict (If it exists): If there is a specific beach or a specific bay where conflict is still a genuine issue, close that specific spot. Do not punish a garfisher 50km out to sea because of a jet-ski problem in a river mouth.

3. Trust the Management: Let the Effort controls and Gear restrictions do the job they were designed to do.

Conclusion

The NSW seafood community is resilient. We have survived floods, East Coast Lows, fuel hikes, and market crashes. But we cannot survive a government that refuses to let us open our doors.

We are the people who bring the ocean to your plate. We are the families who maintain the heritage of the working coast.

The fleet is small. The catch is sustainable. The environmental footprint is minimal.

It is time to unlock the calendar. It is time to let us go to work.

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Keep an eye out for the next parts in The 113-Day Lockout series. We’ll dig deeper into how these closures were created, what they mean for local seafood on your plate, and the reforms we’re calling for. If you care about real NSW fish on NSW tables, don’t miss what comes next.