Publication Date

8-1999

Series Number

114

Publisher

Fisheries Western Australia

City

Perth, Western Australia

ISBN

0 7309 8424 9

ISSN

1035 - 4549

Abstract

Five separate commercial fisheries target the saucer scallop, Amusium balloti (Bernadi 1861) in Western Australian waters. While the average annual catch from these fisheries is around 600 tonnes of scallop meat, past catches have been highly variable with annual landings ranging from 150 to 4,400 tonnes of meat worth between $2 and $59 million. Consequently, scallops represent one of the larger single-species fisheries operating in Western Australia (WA).

A. balloti has a distribution spanning most of the WA coast, from Broome in the north around to Esperance in the south. Despite this extensive distribution, saucer scallops tend to be restricted to areas of bare sand in the more sheltered environments found in the lee of islands and reef systems, and are consequently found in commercially viable amounts in only five locations in WA. The five WA fisheries that target scallops (with average annual landings in brackets) are: the Shark Bay Scallop Managed Fishery (541 t), the Abrolhos Islands and Mid-West Trawl Managed Fishery (121 t), the south coast (15 t), the South-West Trawl Managed Fishery (11 t), and the Nickol Bay Prawn Managed Fishery (4 t).

Number of Pages

30

Keywords

Amusium balloti, Broome, Esperance, saucer scallops, Shark Bay, Abrolhos Islands, Nickol Bay, otter trawling, limited entry fisheries, Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development

Disciplines

Aquaculture and Fisheries | Marine Biology | Natural Resource Economics | Natural Resources Management and Policy | Sustainability

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