Seascape

About the Author

 

My first contact with fisheries science was in 1960 at a summer school conducted by CSIRO Division of Fisheries and Oceanography at its Cronulla Laboratory in Sydney. later that year Geoff Kesteven, the leader of the CSIRO fisheries program, suggested that in my Honours year I study the reproduction of the Tasmanian Commercial Scallop. Pecten fumata, as part of the Division's Scallop Program. At that time the Honours degree at the University of Tasmania was almost entirely devoted to research so I immediately began an association with the fishing industry. Collecting research material required monthly fishing days in D'Entrecasteaux Channel and visits to the scallop processing factories. Thus when I went back to Cronulla for the 1961 Summer School I was welcomed by the likes of John McIntyre and Baughan Wisely as an apprentice mollusc biologist to the world of fisheries science.

First laboratory
The CSIRO Scallop Program convinced the Tasmanian State Government to support its fisheries management with its own research effort. Late in 1963 I was transferred from the Education Department to the Fisheries Division of the Department of Agriculture to constitute that effort. The ex-army wooden hut shown above was my workplace. It was part of the Zoology Department of the University of Tasmania: in the adjoining room Des Griffin (later Director of the Australian Museum) was completing his PhD.Thus I became one of small group of scientists working in State fisheries agencies that were trained by CSIRO in the new mathematical approach to assessing the state of exploited fish stocks. Visits to Australia by John Gulland fired our enthusiasm and introduced us to the models of Beverton and Holt and Ricker.

At this time this seamless link between research and the management of fisheries meant that my research position also included and active participation in the development of fisheries management strategies. So as my research interests expanded to include the new abalone fishery I also assumed prime responsibility for determining both the initial abalone fishing regulations and a systemto monitor the fishery. In 1967 I collaborated with two economists, John Smith and Doug Fergusson, in a study of the rock lobster fishery that resulted inTasmania following Western Australia in limiting the number of vessels inthe fishery. In the six years since my appointment the Tasmanian Government had steadily increased its reliance on a scientific approach to fisheries management. My one man band had grown to a team of researchers and we had both a specialised research vessel and a new research station built on theforeshore at Taroona.

It was not without some sadness that I left my new laboratory in 1971 for an office in the city to take charge of all the State's fisheries activities as Secretary of Fisheries. There I inherited an enormous leather inlaid desk in which I made a discovery that sparked my interest in the history of fisheries management. I was intrigued to find some very old note-paper that carried a letterhead that had the words Fisheries Department under the State crest. A visit to the State Archives Office revealed that contrary to Departmental history I was not the first biologist to direct Tasmanian fisheries. In fact went a young English marine biologist, William Saville-Kent, had been appointed to the equivalent position in 1884.
I talk about oysters with a famous guest at Taroona.

 

Saville-Kent was the father of Australian fisheries science making a major contribution to the development and management of fisheries in four of the Australian colonies between 1884 and 1895. Soon after I learnt that the laboratory at Cronulla where I was first introduced to my vocation was built as a fish hatchery for the next man to lead Australian fisheries Harald C Dannevig. When the colonies federated in 1901 they confidently expected that their not inconsiderable efforts to develop fisheries would be assumed by the new Commonwealth Parliament. However it was 1906 Sir John Forrest, who had brought Saville-Kent to Western Australia, announced that the Government would purchase a trawler to explore for fishing grounds. Soon after Dannevig was appointed the first Commonwealth Director of Fisheries.