Publication Date
1979
Series Number
Fishery Report 38
Publisher
Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Western Australia
City
Perth
Abstract
The existence of prawn stocks in Shark Bay, Western Australia, has been known since 1904 when the sailing ketch "Rip" on charter to the Western Australian Government, trawled large quantities of prawns from the area between Bernier Island and the mainland, Gale (1905). Although the Fisheries research vessel "Lancelin" trawled potentially commercial quantities of prawns from Shark Bay in the early 1950's, it was not until 1962 that a regular fishery was begun.
Today the prawn stocks of Shark Bay support Western Australia's largest and most consistent prawn fishery, having an annual production currently exceeding 2 000 tonnes. The catch is dominated by two large species, (see frontispiece) western king (Penaeus latisulcatus) which provides about two-thirds of the catch, and the brown tiger prawn (Penaeus esculentus) which makes up the remainder.
Since the inception of the fishery, management measures, aimed at rational exploitation of the stocks by controlling the number of fishing vessels, have been in force. To enable this management programme to work successfully, a continuous research programme involving intensive collection of catch and effort data from the fishing fleet and processors, in addition to biological studies, has been carried out.
The results of this research to the end of the 1969 season has been recorded previously in Slack-Smith, 1966, 1969, 1978. The purpose of this booklet is to describe the current fishing operation and to provide a description of the biology of the two commercial species of prawns caught in Shark Bay.
Number of Pages
40
Keywords
Shark Bay, Prawn fishery, Prawns, Resource sustainability, Western Australia
Disciplines
Aquaculture and Fisheries | Environmental Monitoring | Marine Biology | Natural Resource Economics | Natural Resources and Conservation | Natural Resources Management and Policy | Sustainability
Recommended Citation
Penn, J W,
and
Stalker, R W.
(1979), Fisheries Report No 38 - The Shark Bay Prawn Fishery (1970 - 1976). Department of Fisheries and Wildlife, Western Australia, Perth. Report Fishery Report 38.
https://library.dpird.wa.gov.au/fr_rr/333
This file is 27.4 MB. Files over 3MB may be slow to open. For best results, right-click and select "save as..."
Included in
Aquaculture and Fisheries Commons, Environmental Monitoring Commons, Marine Biology Commons, Natural Resource Economics Commons, Natural Resources and Conservation Commons, Natural Resources Management and Policy Commons, Sustainability Commons
