When governments promise reform, details matter. In Australia’s Northern Territory, the government has recommitted to phasing out commercial barramundi gillnets, with the final season slated to end in September next year. On paper, that sounds like progress! But at the same time, officials have scaled back a previous commitment to put cameras on 100 percent of gillnet vessels. Instead, cameras will rotate across boats, capturing only 20 percent of fishing activity each year.
That means 80 percent of fishing will occur without video monitoring. For species already teetering on the brink, that gap is life-altering.
Gillnets are walls of mesh set in the water to entangle fish by their gills. They are efficient, which is precisely the problem. Along with barramundi, these nets can capture threatened, endangered and protected species (often collectively referred to as “TEPS”). Among the most vulnerable are sawfish, ancient rays with long toothed rostra that make them particularly prone to entanglement. Once caught in a gillnet, escape is unlikely for these predators, which is a huge problem as they play ecological roles in river and estuarine systems and hold cultural significance for some Traditional Owners in the Top End. The Northern Territory barramundi fishery has recently been assessed by the nation’s peak threatened species scientists as posing a “very high” risk to endangered freshwater sawfish.
Monitoring is not a silver bullet, but it is foundational. Cameras on fishing vessels provide independent data on what is being caught and discarded, allowing regulators to randomly review footage from any vessel at any time. That unpredictability is key because it discourages irresponsible behavior and improves the reliability of reported bycatch data. But under the new arrangement announced by Northern Territory Fisheries Minister Gerard Maley, cameras will rotate between boats rather than being installed fleetwide. Conservation groups such as the Australian Marine Conservation Society have described this as a major step backwards. “Rotating cameras across vessels creates serious blind spots in critical habitat for sawfish, like around the mouth of the Roper and Daly Rivers. Sawfish are vulnerable to localised extinctions because females return to their river of birth to breed, so the last thing you want is concentrated amounts of fishing at these critical locations going unrecorded,” explained Dr. Leonardo Guida, AMCS shark scientist. He went on to explain that if fishing pressure intensified in these areas and it went largely unrecorded, local populations could decline rapidly (and local declines are not easily offset by immigration from elsewhere).
With 80 percent of fishing effort off camera, confidence in reported bycatch numbers inevitably declines. And any underreporting of endangered species during this final phase distorts our understanding of the transition’s real ecological cost. Data are the backbone of fisheries management: without accurate data, stock assessments wobble. Risk analyses lose precision and claims of sustainability become harder to verify. Electronic monitoring has been touted globally as a cost-effective way to increase transparency in commercial fisheries, so rolling back coverage sends a different message.
Some conservationists argue that if the government cannot properly account for endangered species caught in gillnets, then it should urgently protect critical habitats from commercial gillnetting during the transition. One option is to buy out displaced fishing effort as a priority step, rather than allowing fishing to continue in sensitive areas with limited monitoring. In practical terms, that means compensating licence holders to permanently exit the fishery or surrender specific entitlements, reducing overall effort immediately rather than gradually. It is a direct way to lower pressure on critical habitats while the broader phase-out is underway. Buybacks are not simple or cheap, but they are a familiar policy tool in fisheries reform. Australia has used structural adjustment packages before to reduce fleet capacity in overcapitalised fisheries, and similar programs have been implemented in the United States and parts of Europe. The logic is straightforward: when too many operators are chasing too few fish, or when conservation risks become unacceptable, governments can intervene to shrink effort in a controlled and compensated way rather than relying on market forces alone. A well-designed buyback can target licences operating in or near critical habitats, immediately reducing the likelihood of interactions with endangered species. It can provide financial certainty for fishers who might otherwise face declining access, increasing regulation or reputational pressure. It also signals that the government is willing to put tangible resources behind its conservation commitments, not just policy statements. Decisions about who is eligible, how compensation is calculated and how effort is prevented from simply shifting elsewhere can shape whether a buyback delivers real ecological gains. In the context of a gillnet phase-out, prioritising a buyback could compress risk into a shorter, more manageable window. Instead of allowing fishing to continue in sensitive river mouths with partial oversight, effort could be removed outright from those areas while the remaining administrative steps toward closure are completed. For species vulnerable to localised declines, reducing exposure even by a single breeding season can make a measurable difference.
Electronic monitoring is often framed as the future of fisheries management, a practical bridge between industry and accountability; cameras do not get tired, they do not look away and they create a verifiable record that can be reviewed long after a net is hauled. Around the world, it has been promoted as a way to strengthen compliance, improve bycatch data and build public trust in commercial fisheries. Countries from Canada to New Zealand to the European Union are investing in electronic monitoring as part of modern fisheries management. In some cases, cameras are coupled with sensors, GPS tracking and automated image analysis, creating an integrated system that can flag high-risk events as they happen. These are steps in the right direction for fisheries management to move from reactive enforcement to proactive conservation.
As the final gillnet season approaches, the Northern Territory faces a choice: maintain robust oversight and gather the best possible data during the wind-down… or accept significant gaps in what is recorded. For a species assessed at very high risk, one of these choices might mean the final nail on their proverbial coffin.
