Fishing for Lord Howe Island
Carmen Welss

The Foundation is looking for a buyer for two Commonwealth fishing permits worth 50,000 dollars, to fund a rat eradication program on World Heritage Lord Howe Island.

Lord Howe Island. Photo: Ian Hutton

The Foundation received the permits as a donation from Fortuna Fishery. The company held the only four permits for fishing within the 12 nautical mile exclusion zone off Lord Howe Island and Balls Pyramid. This area includes the Lord Howe Marine Park, which contains the world's most southerly coral barrier reef and some 500 species of fish.

The two licenses originally permitted bottom fishing along a broad band of the southern Queensland coast to the WA border of South Australia. After receiving the gift, the Foundation had permanently extinguished from the two licenses the right to bottom fishing around Lord Howe and Balls Pyramid.

After the changes the permits allow commercial line fishing within the Australian Fishing Zone from South Queensland along the coast via New South Wales and Victoria to the western border of South Australia, excluding the coastal waters of Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia.

The remaining two permits held by Fortuna Fishery allowed longline tuna, broadbill swordfish and marlin fishing within 12 nautical miles of Lord Howe. The company has since permanently extinguished this right to enter the park for any fishing.

This means that all commercial fishing activity within the park, other than by islanders for use on the island itself, has ended for all time.

The Foundation has a long association with conservation on the island, having previously played a key role in saving the endemic Lord Howe Woodhen. The species had declined to less than 30 birds in the 1970s and was rescued through a captive-breeding program, funded by the Foundation.

Funds raised from the sale of the fishing permits will now go towards the eradication of rats, which threaten the island’s unique plant and animal communities.

Rat eradication would allow for threatened species like the Lord Howe Phasmid, Skink, Gecko and Land Snail to be either reintroduced or to recover. Similar programs on offshore islands of New Zealand yielded a five-fold increase in plants and animals.

The World Heritage values of the Lord Howe Island Group include an exceptional diversity of spectacular, scenic landscapes found over a small land area, as well as outstanding underwater vistas, which include reefs considered to be among the most beautiful in the world. The Group contains the only World Heritage listed seamount complex, the Lord Howe Island Rise, and the world’s southernmost true coral-reef.

We hope that the new owner of the permits will honour the intention of the gift for conservation. Traditional long-line fishing is a major threat to seabirds, which get caught in the hooks and drown. There are however simple and inexpensive ways to prevent seabird kills. Research has shown that the setting of longlines at night with effective streamer lines in use and weights near hooks reduces seabird mortality to levels that are safe for most seabird species.

Top of page