Commercial fishing in Australia is the most regulated sector of any and yet we’ve never fished a fish species down to extinction at any time in our history. The industry is dominated by SMEs - SMEs who are the life blood of many small coastal communities. Fishermen play a vital role in our overall food security, but the tide is changing with the commercial fishing sector increasingly dominated by large corporates, who convince policy makers to either buy small cottage based fishermen out, or remove access to viable fishing grounds that are scientifically proven to be sustainable.

So we established the Marine Futures Alliance of Australia. The goal of which is to take a more progressive scientific approach to marine and fisheries management.

Fishermen and Community

What Does 100% Management of the Marine Environment Look Like?

Just like in Europe big corporates are starting to dominate the commercial fishing sector in Australia. In some Australian territorial waters large companies - partly owned in Australia but with major off-shore investors - own over 75% of the fishery and yet, off-load 100% of the catch in another country. None of that economic value comes back to Australia even though we own the fishery. Is this really good policy? We don’t believe so and we’ll show you why.

Let’s be honest, adopting terrestrial - land based national parks - paradigms to deliver marine conservation outcomes doesn’t work and yet, that’s what Governments ask the community and SMEs to support. Pelagic fish DO NOT respect arbitrary lines on a map and it’s ridiculous for the Federal Government to give stakeholders a set of colouring-in pencils and ask them to colour in what they deem needs ‘protection’ and then call that process, ‘science driven’. The entire lobbying effort around the Marine Bio-regional Planning process failed to consider SMEs. The only way to value community, industry and the environment is to take a 100% management approach.

SMEA partners in Tasmania are doing some remarkable work with the cultivation of seaweed for not only the Japanese restaurant sector, but for the global pharmaceutical industry. Big pharma is constantly looking for new products for drug research and specific seaweed species hold a massive key to the success of these projects.

Working with the Ocean

Challenging the Narrative

Australia has locked up over 46% of it’s commonwealth ocean within a patch work of marine protected areas (MPAs). And now we find in early 2026 the federal government is arguing for that estate to increase by 30%.

There is no science to underpin the establishment or large scale MPAs, let alone their expansion. And we’ll show you why the use of MPAs is so flawed and why the environment deserve a better solution.