Fishermen Want To Stop The Rape
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday August 28, 1991
Craig De Bressac, 29, has been fishing off the northern beaches since he was four.
And he says he has never seen the headlands more denuded of marine life.
"My basic scientific knowledge isn't that good but I know the system of the rocks," he said. "It's like the food chain on the land, only magnified a lot more.
"It's a very balanced environment. If you took one thing out completely, it could be very disastrous for the rocks."
Mr De Bressac, of Warriewood, is vice-president of the Sydney Northern division of the NSW Fishing Clubs Association.
He goes fishing at Turimetta Beach (or "Little Narrabeen"), between Warriewood and Narrabeen, about three times a week.
And at least once a week - or more often in summer - he finds groups of up to 10 people foraging for crustaceans and taking them away by the bucket load
He has also seen such groups at Long Reef Marine Park, despite the bans and warning signs there.
"Often people come in a big family group," he said.
"You try and stop them doing it and you get a whole group talking back at you.
"At times the arguments get a bit heated - but what can you do? You've got to go and tell the Fisheries (department)."
Mr De Bressac said the foragers were almost always from Asian countries. He said many could be unaware of the Australian regulations. They were usually collecting crustaceans to eat - whereas Australian-born people tended to shun such food.
"Whether they are so poor that they must eat them for economic reasons, or whether it's a true delicacy in other cultures, I don't know."
Mr De Bressac said most individual fishermen collecting crustaceans for bait did so in moderation and did little or no damage to the environment.
"I'd like to see more education for the public to discriminate between a guy coming down to get a bit of fishing as opposed to a group of people with buckets going through and picking everything up," he said.
"The fishermen have been doing it for 200 years. They've all got the same sense of the environment. They know if they took all that cunje (cunjevoi)out, there'd be no more fish for them."
Mr De Bressac says "everything on the rocks has its place". He pointed out the small turban shells, which eat the weed of the coastal reef. The weed is the main diet of several species of fish and a place for crabs to breed.
If the turban shells are taken, the weed "would grow to a point where it would choke everything out" and turn rock pools stagnant, he said.
"Then there'd be nowhere for the crabs to breed, and the fish would shoot through because there'd be no more food for them."
Mr De Bressac said he would like to see tighter controls against reef"harvesting".
"People should be given the power to make citizens' arrests, and the police should come when they're called," he said.
"They tend to treat it as a toy issue. You call the cops and say, 'There are 10 guys here stripping the joint out,' and they don't do anything.
"And it's so hard for the Fisheries officers. I think there are only seven in the whole Sydney metropolitan area."
Mr De Bressac said foraging had become a more serious problem over the past eight years but fishermen wanted to play their part in solving it.
"The fishermen, the true rock fishermen, are doing a lot to stop the rape of the headlands," he said.
© 1991 Sydney Morning Herald