Targeted spawning closures, tighter vessel limits, stronger compliance enforcement and the construction of new habitat in barren sea areas should form part of the Northern Territory’s next golden snapper recovery plan, the Amateur Fishermen’s Association of the Northern Territory said.

The peak recreational fishing body used its submission to the Finocchiaro Government’s Golden Snapper Have Your Say consultation to argue for a shift away from broad, long-term restrictions toward more targeted and strategic measures.

The consultation was announced by Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Gerard Maley on March 31, following the November release of the government’s Golden Snapper Stock Assessment report.

The report found that, based on the most recent scientific data, golden snapper stocks in the greater Darwin region were classified as depleting, but were sustainable in other parts of the NT.

AFANT chief executive David Ciaravolo said golden snapper management was not a new issue, with multiple interventions introduced over recent decades, but key problems remained unresolved.

The submission outlines four key reform areas: securing funding for research, improving data and monitoring, restoring trust through genuine partnerships and co-management, and strategically sequencing any additional restrictions to better target impacts while avoiding unnecessary economic and social harm.

“Business as usual will not rebuild golden snapper or restore community confidence,” Mr Ciaravolo said.

“The Territory needs a recovery plan that learns from the past and fixes the structural problems that have limited previous interventions.

“Recreational fishers should not be viewed only as users to be regulated. They can also be stewardship partners whose local knowledge, peer influence, and voluntary monitoring capacity are valuable recovery assets.”

AFANT also outlined measures that could be implemented immediately if government determines that precautionary action is necessary now. These include a targeted spawning closure, vessel limit changes, stronger enforcement of compliance, and construction of additional golden snapper habitat in previously barren areas.

The November report said the golden snapper stock assessments undertaken in 2011 and 2014 concluded golden snapper were overfished in the NT, and as a result, in 2015, the bag limit was reduced by 50 per cent in the Darwin region, and reef fish protection areas were also introduced. However in 2018, an updated stock assessment, that considered data up to and including 2017, indicated that stocks in the greater Darwin region remained overfished and that existing fishing pressure would likely maintain the level of overfishing.

The latest assessment of numbers was done in 2021, but the report was only released at the end of last year.

The report said the biomass of golden snapper in the greater Darwin region was critically low, at 21 per cent of its original, unfished level, meaning only about a fifth of their original population remains.

“The percentage could be as low as 13 per cent or as high as 29 per cent,” the report said.

“Forecasting the biomass trajectory…suggests that stocks are unlikely to recover from the critically low level.”

The report said golden snapper serve as an indicator species for other inshore reef fish in the region that are slow growing, long lived, but lack sufficient data for individual stock assessments. They are the grass emperor, mangrove jack, red emperor, cods, red snappers, and blackspot tuskfish.