The bêche-de-mer, pearl-shell and trochus fisheries - The Great Barrier Reef: An Environmental History - page 55

The bêche-de-mer , pearl-shell
and trochus fisheries
Introduction
Within a geomorphological context of significant vulnerability to degradation
(outlined in Chapter 3) , various human impacts on the Great Barrier Reef have
occurred. One significant impact has occurred due to the operation of various
fisheries based on reef resources, including bêche-de-mer , pearl-shell and trochus.
Although reef organisms (including corals) have been removed from the Great
Barrier Reef since the period of earliest European exploration, the first sustained
European commercial fisheries in the Great Barrier Reef were the bêche-de-mer
and pearl-shell fisheries. The animals that were harvested formed part of the
landscape of coral reefs, and diving for those organisms was concentrated on, and
in the vicinity of, those reefs. Large fishing grounds for each of those industries
were located in Torres Strait, but the reefs of the Great Barrier Reef were also used
extensively and, in some cases, the fisheries extended southwards as far as Moreton
Bay. The earliest operation of those European reef fisheries was unregulated and
few documentary records describe the beginning of those industries; Bauer (1964,
p125) has acknowledged that production statistics for the bêche-de-mer fishery,
for instance, were not available before 1884. The period of the historical bêche-
de-mer and pearl-shell fisheries also lies beyond the range of oral history sources.
However, the later development of those industries is described in Queensland
Government records and reports - not least because of increasing concerns about
the depletion of resources, and the abuse of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander
workers - and the more recent trochus industry has also been described in oral
history sources (Loos, 1982; Ganter, 1994; Reynolds, 2003).
The bêche-de-mer fishery
The early history of the bêche-de-mer fishery was first described in detail by Saville-
Kent in his Annual Reports of the Queensland Chief Inspector of Fisheries that
were published in the QVP and QPP (Saville-Kent, 1890a, 1893). The bêche-
de-mer fishery began early in the European history of Queensland; one account
attributes the earliest European commercial bêche-de-mer fishing to James Aicken