Recreational fishermen want increased measures to protect stocks of rock lobster on Tasmania's far-north-west coast.
The latest research from the Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) confirms the total quantity of unfished rock lobster in the area is now similar to historic lows on the state's east coast.
The head of the Tasmanian Association for Recreational Fishing (TARfish), Mark Nikolai, said data for the north west confirmed what fishermen had been seeing for years.
"The indicators have been there for a number of years now," Mr Nikolai said.
"The percentage of biomass sitting in the fishery is less than 10 per cent, which is a really critically low level."
When levels on the east coast fell below 10 per cent the State Government instigated a decade-long plan to replenish the population.
Those measures included reducing quotas for commercial fishermen and capping bag limits for recreational fishermen to two rock lobsters per pot.
Under the plan, the east coast fishery closes for both recreational and commercial sectors once the commercial sector has reached the catch cap.
Lessons from east coast
John Sansom, chair of the Tasmanian Rock Lobster Fishermen's Association, said the east coast was an example of a successful management system.
"We are half way through the 10-year plan and this season, for example, the commercial fishermen caught 30 per cent of allowable catch in a month and a half," Mr Sansom said.
Commercial fishermen have caught 38 per cent of the total allowable catch of 119 tonnes since the start of March.
Last year, by comparison, fishermen had landed 29.6 per cent of the catch in the same time frame.
Mr Sansom said the increasing catch rates were a sign the stocks were revitalising.
Call for action sooner rather than later
Rod Pearn, the recreational fishery manager with the Department of Primary Industries and Parks, Water and the Environment (DPIPWE) said there were no immediate plans to change the rules in the north-west.
"Stocks are at a fairly low virgin biomass level and we are seeing some issues with egg production," Mr Pearn said.
"But this is the preliminary data. It is at a preliminary stage."
The Recreational Fishery Advisory Committee will make a submission on fisheries management soon to the new Tasmanian Primary Industries Minister, Sarah Courtney.
Mr Nikolai said recreational fishermen felt a sense of urgency about improving the north-west stocks.
"Generally recreational fishers want to be proactive; they don't want to wait until the fishery starts to crash before we start doing anything," he said.
"There needs to be a process to consider what the potential management measures are and how potentially effective they can be.
"You can do a lot of things. You can shorten the season, you can increase size limits, you can reduce bag limits, but picking the range of measures that will actually do something is actually really difficult."
IMAS estimated 20,000 people have recreational rock lobster permits across Tasmania and data suggests 12,000 of those prefer to fish on the east coast.
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