Northern Australia fishing trawlers changing tack after Sea Swift mothership suspension

Banana prawns could be expensive or hard to find this Easter. (Supplied: Austral Fisheries)

The pristine waters of Queensland’s Gulf of Carpentaria are brimming with prawns, but fishermen are pulling back their catch to try and keep their heads above water this season.

It is the first season since Australian shipping company Sea Swift announced its shock mothership suspension in August, leaving trawlers high and dry in the remote northern waters.

Sea Swift’s barges, laden with fuel and supplies, kept a fleet of boats on the water as long as possible in an industry where the line between profit and loss is on a knife edge and every minute at sea matters.

Without a mothership, operators must return to port to refuel, adding to the cost of bringing in the catch and cutting profits.

Smaller fishing operators are feeling the brunt of the hardship compared to larger ships at sea as they face rising fuel costs, less vessel space and port restrictions.

To combat the loss, fishermen are honing in on the quality of prawns for consumers rather than quantity, so there will still be plenty of tasty prawns on supermarket shelves.

Small boats, big problems

Greg Albert, who manages two northern prawn trawlers, said while the closure of Sea Swift motherships had impacted all prawn fishermen, some were more affected than others.

“Some of the smaller operators have got less capacity on the vessel because the vessel sizes are smaller,” he said.

“If we’re fishing in Weipa and we have to unload, we’ve got to steam all the way down to Karumba to unload and fuel up because there’s no other port.

“So their holds don’t hold the quantity of frozen product, and also they don’t hold the quantity of fuel to last a month or six weeks.”

Travelling from the top of the Gulf to the bottom then back to fishing grounds is a tough feat for Mr Albert’s small-scale trawler, so he is holding back on throwing out his net.

“The catches have been modest, but we’re trying to keep the quality to the highest standards,” he said.

“The products have been handled and looked after a lot more than previously [when we were] handling twice the amount of product.”

Changing tack

Austral Fisheries prawn division managing director Andy Prendergast said to make up for last year’s flooded market, he was reducing his catch from 1,700 tonnes to just under 1,000 tonnes.

He said the poor financial returns from last season’s large catch had changed more than 50 years of fishing practice, and the loss of mothershipping services had been a substantial blow to the industry.

“Without being able to be serviced in those regions adds an enormous cost and inefficiency to our business,” Mr Prendergast said.

“[It’s] really unfortunate because the capacity of [Sea Swift’s] line haul vessels that run up and down the east coast are very effective and a cheap way of getting product out and resources in that we need.

“Long term, something needs to occur for the fishery in general.

“There’s a lot of independent operators out there that don’t have the same capacity as us.”

Sea Swift weighing up options

Sea Swift managing director Chris Pearce said the company was reviewing its position on the mothership suspension.

“The service became unviable to continue, and the addition of other mothershipping vessels into the region made the service further uncommercial,” Mr Pearce said.

“Sea Swift is now focusing on the core business of general cargo and maintaining food security in the Torres Strait.”