Queensland seafood lovers who want to eat sustainably and can afford a finer fillet have been given the green light to eat seven new species of reef fish.
But they have been advised against buying iconic species, including prawns and barramundi, that have been caught in the wild.
This is the takeaway from the Australian Marine Conservation Society’s GoodFish sustainable seafood guide ratings, which have just been updated after four years.
Coral trout, red throat emperor, red emperor and crimson snapper were all upgraded from an amber to a green light, while hussar, stripey snapper, tuskfish were also given the all-clear after being included in the guide for the first time.
ACMS’ sustainable seafood manager, Adrian Meder, said the species were all part of the state’s reef line fishery, where commercial anglers catch target species by hand.
He said management of that fishery was “really admirable”.
“It’s a shining light for fisheries, not only in Australia, but in the world,” Meder said.
He said those positive environmental ratings were a result of years of work by the state’s fishing regulators and commercial anglers after the fisheries responded to a “reckoning”, with fish populations “running out”.
ACMS will now be recommending these to more than 100 partner restaurants, as well as consumers, giving them the all clear to cook with those species given green lights.
Meder said reef-line anglers experienced “big costs imposed” during the industry’s reform, including installing satellite tracking on vessels to make sure they weren’t fishing in protected zones.
But he said the upgraded ratings meant those anglers had “come out the other side” and were poised to reap the benefits.
“Not only are healthy fishing stocks more environmentally resilient,” he said, “but [more plentiful] fish are easier and cheaper to catch.”
In contrast, he said Queensland was a national laggard in reforming trawler and gill net fisheries.
In some cases, he said the Queensland government was not compliant with its own obligations to monitor and minimise the impact of the state’s fisheries on threatened and endangered species, or implementing best-practice fisheries management.
He said the obligation to have an independent observer to monitor bycatch on those vessels was scrapped under the Newman government and was yet to be reinstated.
“That decade without any trustworthy information from those high-impact fisheries means Queensland has fallen far behind best practice that operates elsewhere in Australia,” he said.
Queensland waters were “chock-full of very diverse and vulnerable threatened species” from dugong and sea snakes.
“We think Queenslanders don’t want a side of dead dugong, dolphin, turtle or sawfish with their prawns or barra,” he said.
But Meder said those fisheries could also become sustainable and profitable if they too underwent reform.
“We very much look forward to the day we can give those species the green light,” he said. “That will be job done for us, and a great outcome for Queensland seafood lovers and, indeed, the fishing industry.”
Spanish mackerel, spanner crab and stout whiting all saw their rating decline from green to red. Sea mullet was upgraded from amber to green.
