| By Tony Courtney
The Moreton Bay otter trawl fishery is a multispecies fishery, with the majority of the catch composed of various species of prawns, squid and Moreton Bay Bugs. The project was an initiative of the MBSIA and developed from concerns over a number of issues. These included concern over declining profitability in the fishery, which is generally attributed to poor prawn prices, declining markets for small ‘bay prawns’, and increasing operational costs, including rising diesel fuel prices. The MBSIA and trawl fishers also expressed a desire to have a greater say over management of the fishery.
The project objectives were to:
- Review the literature and data (i.e., economic, biological and logbook) relevant to the Moreton Bay trawl fishery.
- Identify and prioritise management objectives for the Moreton Bay trawl fishery, as identified by the trawl fishers.
- Undertake an economic analysis of Moreton Bay trawl fishery.
- Quantify long-term changes to fishing power for the Moreton Bay trawl fishery.
- Assess priority harvest strategies identified above
Economic analyses indicated that although the fishery is reasonably technically efficient (mean technical efficiency of 0.71), profitability is marginal and the long-term economic viability of both the T1/M1 and M2 fleets are unviable.
All analyses and modelling strongly indicate that the abundance of Brown Tiger Prawns in Moreton Bay has increased in recent years, concurrently with a large (i.e., 70%) reduction in effort. To this end, the Brown Tiger Prawn stock appears to have recovered from previous decades of high effort and is currently considered to be at or around maximum sustainable yield.
A range of alternative corporate governance models that could be applied to the Moreton Bay otter trawl fishery are presented.
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Final Reports 
