Strategic assessment - Draft Northern Prawn Fishery Management Plan 2012
« Northern Prawn Fishery
Strategic assessment of the Draft Northern Prawn Fishery Management Plan 2012 under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999
Australian Fisheries Management Authority, 2012
Update – November 2013:
In November 2013, the Australian Fisheries Management Authority announced that it would not proceed with implementation of the Draft Northern Prawn Fishery Management Plan 2012 and that the Northern Prawn Fishery would continue to be managed under input controls under the Northern Prawn Fishery Management Plan 1995.
Further information on the management of the Northern Prawn Fishery is available from the Australian Fisheries Management Authority.
Current decisions under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 for the Northern Prawn Fishery can be found here.
Draft Northern Prawn Fishery Management Plan 2012
In December 2011, the Minister for Sustainability, Environment, Water, Population and Communities entered into an agreement with the Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) to undertake a strategic assessment of the Draft Northern Prawn Fishery Management Plan 2012, following AFMA’s announcement that it intended to revoke the Northern Prawn Fishery Management Plan 1995 under section 20(3) of the Fisheries Management Act 1991 and determine a new plan of management for the Northern Prawn Fishery (NPF), the Northern Prawn Fishery Management Plan 2012 (NPF Plan).
The NPF Plan proposed to:
- provide a framework for AFMA to manage the NPF through individual transferrable quotas (ITQs)
- set up a system of transferrable Statutory Fishing Rights and how those rights will be allocated
- provide for AFMA to set the fishing seasons each year
- limit access to the fishery to holders of these rights and list the obligations to which the holders must comply
- require AFMA to set a total allowable catch for each quota species
- require AFMA to manage the impact of the fishery on the wider marine environment
- retain the existing management advisory committee in the form of NORMAC
- list the primary species to which the plan applies
- list the area of water to which the plan applies, and
- allow for certain amounts of overcatch to occur without prosecution.
The strategic assessment report prepared as part of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) strategic assessment was open for public comment from 9 February 2012 to 13 March 2012, to provide the opportunity for public submissions regarding the impacts of the proposed plan on matters of national environmental significance.