NSW Fisheries are required to undergo Environmental Impact Assessment, just like any other destructive and extractive industry. However, in NSW, so little is known about marine ecology, that the Environmental Impact Statements have been prepared for most fisheries are thin and watery documents, offering little or no hope for the protection marine biodiversity.

This is probably in part due to the anomaly that fish and sharks and marine invertebrates are not protected under the Threatened Species Conservation Act, but the Fisheries Management Act. The TSC Act in fact, defines "animal" as every thing other than a human or a fish.

As a result, the agency charged with the protected of marine threatened species is the same agency charged with managing the exploitation of marine fish. So species like the Eastern Angel Shark, which has suffered massive declines, and is listed on the IUCN Red List of Endagered Species, is commercially caught and killed in NSW, as are numerous other species at risk.

The most recent EIS to be released was the Ocean Trap and Line Fishery EIS. HCEC teamed up with the Nature Conservation Council and the Australian Marine Conservatio Society to respond to the document. Read our response below.