Disgusting Proof Of WA Fish Carnage Covered Up

January 4, 2009

Release from: Gary Adshead
The West Australian

These are photographs the former State government deemed too damaging to the WA fishing industry’s reputation to make public.

Captured on a lonely stretch of the North-West’s 80 Mile Beach by a helicopter pilot, they show the remains of hundreds of sharks dumped illegally after being caught in nets and having their fins sliced off for sale in Asian restaurants.

But the culprits weren’t foreign fishermen plundering our ocean’s stocks. They were home-grown licensed operators and so far no one involved has been prosecuted.

“Had that story gone international it was horrific enough for our (industry) competitors to use against us,” former fisheries minister Jon Ford revealed yesterday. “I thought it was bad enough to get us kicked out of the European market. The department ummed and ahhed about releasing pictures, but it was decided it would be too damaging to our reputation.”

Mr Ford was the minister in March last year when he was shown these and other more disturbing images of what had taken place on the pristine beach between Broome and Port Hedland over several weeks. There was also evidence that protected sawfish had been netted and dumped in dunes near a commercial fishing camp.

The minister’s response was to revoke the licences of two fishermen and demand the Department of Fisheries launch a prosecution case. Ten months on, no charges have been laid.

“The water off 80 Mile Beach is one of the few viable breeding grounds for the endangered sawfish and they were being caught and dumped as part of a threadfin salmon fishing operation,” Mr Ford told The West Australian.

“We talk about the illegal foreign fishermen, but what surprised me was the domestic side of things.”

Mr Ford’s comments follow a report from the Australian Institute of Criminology warning of the threat posed by organised crime to WA’s multi-million-dollar fishing industry. Most at risk are high-value abalone, pearling and rock lobster markets.

“The black markets in WA will get worse as the world’s fishing stocks dry up,” Mr Ford predicted. “Organised crime in our domestic market will happen. All they are looking at is the bottom line and the dirty dollar.”

But Mr Ford, whose electorate takes in part of the Kimberley and Pilbara, said crimes in the fishing industry did not have to be organised and sophisticated to do serious damage.

He described what happened at 80 Mile Beach as the worst abuse he had seen in more than three years as minister. He was so irate at the senseless waste he took the matter to Cabinet.

“As soon as I saw those photographs my response to the department was to say ‘this guy’s not fishing any more, is he?’” Mr Ford said.

“It was so bad it could have affected the whole of the WA market. If you talk about how upset people get when the occasional idiot kicks a quokka on Rottnest, then there would have been outrage about this. These guys can wipe out whole species and they don’t give a rat’s about it.”

Bruce Gould, one of the two men who operated separate threadfin salmon licences on 80 Mile Beach, is now driving a truck in Port Hedland after Mr Ford took away his $150,000 fishing licence last April. The other licence belonged to well-known commercial Broome fisherman Milton Comino. Both blamed men working at the camps when the shark and sawfish carcasses were found.

“I told them not to catch sharks and fin them,” Mr Gould said. “When I was on the nets, I would sell 90 per cent of what I caught, including the sharks.

“These blokes went down there and thought they’d make good money out of finning the sharks, but they were too lazy to bury the trunks and started leaving them lying on the beach. Along comes this bloke in a helicopter followed by Fisheries officers who found the dead sawfish near Milton’s camp and that just nailed it.”

One of the men alleged to have caught and finned the sharks left WA for the Northern Territory, making the department’s investigation more difficult. A department spokesman said yesterday the inquiry was ongoing and that no information about the case would be released at this stage.

Mr Ford said it would be a major disappointment if no further legal action was taken. It would send the wrong message to more organised groups who saw WA as a soft target.

The department, which recently lost its chief executive and two senior fisheries officers to a corruption scandal, said it was well-placed to deal with crime gangs setting up blackmarket operations here.

Last year, the department worked with WA Police to smash an abalone poaching operation with links to the Eastern States.