All hands on deck in bid for prawn bonanza
TRAWLERS are rigging up in Cairns in preparation for what crews hope will be a bumper season for banana prawns.
Austral Fisheries’ prawning division manager Andy Prendergast said the operation stuck to tight schedules at the tail-end of the wet season. “Each year on the 20th of March we have up to 80 crew arrive, depending on how intense the season is going to be,” he said.
“We sail from Cairns on the 27th, where we’ve been operating from the last nine years, to start the season from April 1.”
Mr Prendergast said pulling in big hauls relied on rain early in the wet season, although recent bursts and Cyclone Nora would have an effect.
“The predation rate on the prawn population in rivers is about 25 per cent of the population per week, whereas it drops down to 5 per cent if they can get out to sea,” he said. “If they can get out early, there’s more of them and they’re a larger size.”
Trawlers will run along a 6000km-long fishery from Cape York to the Kimberley, using light aircraft to identify “mud boils” likely to have been caused by prawns.
“This year is not easy to predict,” Mr Prendergast said.
“If I had to do a prediction now, and it’s incredibly difficult to do, we would like to see somewhere between 3500-7000 tonnes.”
The best year on record was 1974 when 14,500 tonnes of banana prawns was landed.