A planned fishing rally from Port Beach to Perth has sparked traffic mayhem as more than 150 cars and boats on trailers turned out to protest the State\u2019s controversial fishing bans.<\/p>\n
Reel Rights Convoy \u2014 driven by a community alliance called the Coastal Collective \u2014 invited \u201clocal fishermen and fisherwomen to spruce up their beloved boats and join us early this Sunday morning\u201d in an attempt to draw attention to the bans.<\/p>\n
Footage shared by Main Roads WA after 10:30am on Sunday morning highlighted the result, with video depicting heavily congested lanes northbound on Kwinana Freeway.<\/p>\n
Dotted throughout the traffic were several cars towing boats. The dynamic speed limit dropped to 60km\/h, but it didn\u2019t appear to represent the speed at which vehicles were travelling.<\/p>\n
\u201cVarious lanes under speed. Heavy congestion from Canning highway through to Mitchell Freeway. Plan ahead and allow for extra travel time,\u201d a Main Roads update read.<\/p>\n
The independent WA group of community members and fishing enthusiasts hopes to establish a parliamentary inquiry into the actions surrounding the ban, and make recommendations to improve outcomes around fish stocks, their coastal lifestyle, and certainty to small businesses that have been affected.<\/p>\n
They believe there has not been adequate consultation with stakeholders, or adequate scientific data to support the legislation.<\/p>\n
On Friday, SME Australia and Marine Futures Alliance founder Dean Logan called the 20-month pause on recreational fishing in the West Coast bioregion a \u201cscientific and political nonsense\u201d and the result of fierce lobbying.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is a really mischievous strategy by the recreational fishing lobby to eradicate cottage-based fishermen,\u201d Mr Logan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019re like cheshire cats sitting in the background . . . and then we\u2019ll just have it selfishly to ourselves, because it\u2019ll be a recreational fishing haven.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s scientifically flawed when we don\u2019t even know how many fish the recreational fishing industry catch.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A planned fishing rally from Port Beach to Perth has sparked traffic mayhem as more than 150 cars…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":420638,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,75,128,1191,45],"class_list":["post-420637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-traffic","tag-wa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=420637"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/420637\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/420638"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=420637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=420637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=420637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}