A 50-year-old Karratha man has been fined more than $4,700 in Karratha Court this week for multiple offences relating to fishing for mud crabs.
On 28 November last year, the man was seen by a Fisheries officer from the Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) handling an illegal fish trap.
He was also found to have undersize green mud crabs, which he’d emptied into a bucket.
The man failed to provide information requested by the DPIRD officer, behaved aggressively, and drove off without allowing an inspection of his catch and the seizure of illegal traps. As a result, his fines were effectively doubled.
Two days later a search warrant was served on the man, with assistance from WA Police, and two traps were seized along with two undersize green crabs.
The offender was fined $1,000 and issued an additional mandatory penalty of $240 for the undersize crabs, the same amounts of $1,000 and $240 for using illegal gear, $500 for failing to provide information and $1,500 for the obstruction of Fisheries officers and was ordered to pay costs of $264.30.
The use of fish traps is widely banned in WA, due to the potential impacts on aquatic life, and anyone who comes across abandoned fish traps is urged report them to
FishWatch on
1800 815 507. Alternatively, you can report your find through
the online form on Crimestoppers.
Green mud crabs can grow up to 300 millimetres (mm) in shell width and weigh up to 2.5 kilograms, but the crabs involved in this case were under the minimum legal size of 150mm carapace width.
DPIRD’s Supervising Fisheries and Marine Officer at Karratha, Michael Dunne said the use of fish traps remained an ongoing concern.
“It is against Western Australia’s fishing laws to use traps to take fish from oceanic waters, as well as estuaries, inlets, rivers, brooks or streams,” Mr Dunne said.
“The possession of illegal fishing gear on land adjacent to those waters is also an offence.”