Guiding Australian Consumers to Sustainable Seafood Choices - SEAFOOD Ecolabelling: Principles and Practice - page 401

gov.au/corp site/info services/publications/sotr/sharks rays/). However, the state
of Queensland (QLD) is the principal manager of shark fisheries in the Great Barrier
Reef World Heritage Area, not the GBRMPA.

19.5.2 Resolving the complex nature of fishing

Australia encompasses eight main geopolitical jurisdictions, each with a respon-
sibility and unique management regime for marine areas. Each of these jurisdic-
tions has spawned a myriad of bilateral and multilateral domestic and international
fisheries agreements to manage the fish populations. However, most of these man-
agement boundaries have little or no regard for natural ecological boundaries or
species ranges and thus often greatly differing fishing techniques and management
systems are applied to the one fish population. For example, the Ocean Trap and
Line Fishery, managed by the state of New South Wales (NSW), overlaps in species
and methods with the QLD-managed Inshore Finfish Fishery to the north of NSW,
and with the nationally managed Gillnet, Hook and Trap Fishery which principally
operates to the south of NSW. Both the NSW and QLD fisheries are managed using
a regime of gear and boat restrictions (input controls) with few catch restrictions,
while the Gillnet, Hook and Trap Fishery is principally managed by a system of
output controls in the form of total allowable catches, with few input controls.

19.5.3 Inadequate seafood labelling
One of the major problems with purchasing seafood in Australia is the lack of
information about seafood products at the point of sale. The Australian Marine
Conservation Society promotes the need for seafood labelling to include the stan-
dardised name of the species, the name of the company and country of source, and
the type of fishing gear employed in the species' capture or aquaculture harvest.
Unfortunately, in the absence of a comprehensive national seafood labelling sys-
tem, it is almost impossible for the consumer to be fully informed. As a result, it
is extremely difficult for the Australian Marine Conservation Society to provide
consumers with a seafood Guide that they can always apply to their choices at the
seafood counter.

19.6 New directions

A new direction is clearly needed in Australia to achieve wide-scale adoption
of sustainable seafood practices within the seafood industry. While Australia's
Sustainable Seafood Guide will continue to play a key independent auditing role and
source of advice for ethical seafood consumers, it is likely that sustainable seafood
policies and seafood certification programmes will eventually be adopted by the
large Australian seafood retailers, and to a lesser extent by the restaurant sector.