Author Description

Once a week the average Australian family enjoys a seafood meal, whether it is take-away fish and chips, servings of prawn curry at a restaurant or a snapper barbecued at home. These meals are based on Australian-harvested seafood, fresh, clean and green - the latter because we are determined to keep our fishery harvest at a sustainable level. We face immense challenges. All our fisheries have reached their sustainable limit, yet our population continues to grow and consequently so does the demand for seafood. We can only meet existing demand by importing seafood and recently have had to import more than we catch. This book shows how Australian society can recognise the contribution commercial fishers make to our lifestyle. This will require us to embrace them as a vital part of our communities rather than blame them for declining catches and environmental damage. It also indicates what fishers need to do to gain community acceptance, so that everyone can understand the dilemma and act to ensure that future generations will have the option to eat seafood.