A 54-year-old man from Success has been fined $6000 for interfering with commercial fishing gear and not holding a valid commercial fishing licence.<\/p>\n
Fisheries officers from the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development saw the man cutting float lines to four octopus pots from a vessel in Cockburn Sound in July 2023.<\/p>\n
The officers recovered the four floats from the water, which were marked with the commercial licence number of another fisherman licensed to operate in Cockburn Sound.<\/p>\n
Further investigation found the man had also fished in Cockburn Sound three times between June and July 2023 without holding a valid commercial fishing licence.<\/p>\n
He was fined in the Fremantle Magistrates Court last week.<\/p>\n
DPIRD senior operations manager Liam Plant said it was an offence to interfere with fishing gear, it was not acceptable at any time, and was taken very seriously by the department and the courts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe gear used by commercial fishers across the State is regulated to protect the sustainability of the marine environment,\u201d Mr Plant said.<\/p>\n
\u201cInterfering with the gear can not only have an impact on fish stocks and the broader marine environment but also on commercial fishers being able to carry out their lawful fishing activities.<\/p>\n
\u201cEnsuring a valid licence is held for commercial fishing is also essential so catch can be monitored to help support the research and science programs, which monitor the sustainability of WA\u2019s valuable fish stocks.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 54-year-old man from Success has been fined $6000 for interfering with commercial fishing gear and not holding…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":444391,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[64,63,155775,23800,75,44,46,128,8080,45],"class_list":["post-444390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-cockburn","tag-courts-justice","tag-environment","tag-news","tag-perth","tag-science","tag-south","tag-wa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444390","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=444390"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/444390\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/444391"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=444390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=444390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=444390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}