In the fish and chip shop a piece of flake is meant to be 50g. @ 5.50 that is $110 per kilo and $7.50 (Melbourne price fior locally caught flake) $150 per kilo.

The plate price is a lot higher, depending and restaurant.

Abalone fresh frozen at Tullamarine Airport $120-150 per shellfish – double to triple that per kilo.

Flathead tails hamton fresh fish shop – $55 -65 per kilo

Fish and chips was once a poor persons feed – not it has become ’boutique’. For a family of 5 five pieces of flake, five potato cakes and 5 dim sims is typically worth (Victorian version of the names) is worth $50 to $60. Unemployment benefit that more than 1 million Australians live on is $240 per week and pension $340.

Fish and chip is not a nutritious cheap feed any longer – McDonald’s is and only possibly nutritious – depending on what is cheapest.

This high price is the current and ongoing subsidy to marine biological theory, over management and failure to regulate zealous marine conservation.

yes, I agree thats another way to read the $1-200 per kilo line, i.e. as anything between 1 and 200 per kilo rather than what I went for (1200 per kilo). I would then love to know where I can find the restaurant that sells at 1 dollar per kilo on the plate though! Hence, either way, there is something fishy about that line.

I’m afraid I can’t make out a coherent question in the three points you’ve raised so I’ll pass.

On a point of fact, most people here are not economists. Most are intelligent lay people and interested in a debate. Unfortunately you didn’t really engage with them.

So they’re trying to understand how strongly you are putting your case. That’s why people are drawing you out and saying ‘surely there is such a thing as overfishing?’ That’s not hostility or ‘economists’. Its interested people trying to engage in a debate. But you won’t be pinned down and seem to just keep talking in anecdotes and assertions.

I totally underestimated to hostility of the reception. I was hoping for discussion – but again it is my fault for not understanding how narrow the economic focus on fisheries is in Australia and the weight you give overseas references and Australian science detrived from them. I was also amazed that someone could ask that fishermen should be restricted to a ‘living wage’.
The why not economists, academics, miners, foresters?I have heard people scream that at fishermen at meetings and bureucrats vistiot them at home and say they feel ill in a luxury home built on collapsing a fishstock.

I am surprised by the list having a universal; belief in overfishing. At some point each fishery must be able to fish within the range of the fish and their productivity.
The heartfelt green beliefs in regard to fishing are – that commercial fishermen are a threat etc. and cannot see how that is not contradicted by an almost deliberate lack of concern by other in regard to the impact of Port Development at Gladstone. That will take a while forn me to owrk out.I am wrapped that list knew of the Hexham fish habitat yrestoration and the early responses to the secon part – even if they did not fully agree – and could not understand my ‘expression, still did a fair job in summarising. I do not wish to offend anyone.

Anyway Nic thanks for putting up the final part and let me ask you a question in parts without assuming any common knowledge.

1. Seeing as Australian Commercial Fisheries have to make a reliable catch to pay the bills if there is a downturn in the fishery because to many are caught then fishing stops. You cannot go out to fish if there is not prospect of a catch to pay for licenses, fuel, crew and the boat.

2. Only when the fish are abundant again on your fishing grounds can you start fishing again – but if you go too long without fish you lose market share and buyers. This happened in the Barracouta fishery and the only reference I have is in a Book of interviews with fishermen called Craft and Craftsman of Australian Fishing by Gary Kerr – Mans’l Books Portland Victoria.

The barracouta, once the mainstay of southern fisheries, ‘disappeared’ in the early 1970′s and lost market. Now there are so few buyers the market price crashes if much more than 1 tonne per week goes onto the market. But no-one ever accused the fishermen of overfishing – uniquely. Everyone knew that using several sticks of gelignite ( have a reference for that in an Old Australian Fishing Magazine describing the sticks to fishermen incase they caught them.to blast for early siesmic testing was going to have some impact – and many that fished also worked in the early days of the oil industry. Whatever happened barracouta as a species are still here and will be forever with regular peaks of abundance around the cost and only occasionally in Port Phillip Bay which is too polluted – I think everyone can agree on that.

3 As this is true for all fresh fish fisheries why do they need government management – they are regulated ultimately by the market and the fisheries are no threat to other species – especially as they get smaller.

So can we agree on that – whty can’t the fishing industry be left to expand and contract on its ability to maintain reliable high quality supply to the market.

The 1200 AUS per kilo

Paul it is $100 to $200 per kilo which is not all that much consider a restaurant meal for $25 that contains a 200 gram piece of fish.

The best way to guarantee fish stocks if it is possible is size limits where the species is well above breeding size.

@ rog; from the page you linked:

The wild-catch sector caught
less and earned the same

That indicates the price of Australian Fish is increasing – I guess.

@ FDB: many of our licenced commercial fishers are already geographically constrained and with no species caps, yet we still have fish despite over 100 years of operation.

FYI – Gummy Shark cheapest option fish and chip shop (50g portion) = ~$90/kg (at least double for pub grub and double again for restaurant)

Auction Price at market (Victoria, Australia) = ~$9/kg (at least three steps, processing, transport & co-op, above landed price).

@ Paul Frijters: poor writing? – poor reading!

1200 AUS per kilo

? – where did you get that from?

$1-200 per kilo

= $100/kg to $200/kg – easier?

Sorry Bob – please continue – something about assumptions wasn’t it?

But you’re right, the prose is simply dreadful.

There is to a very real problem with how commercial fisheries have been valued. Any additional values are called ‘multipliers’ and not seen as ‘credible’. Why not? They are easily measurable. Buy fish in a restaurant and its price is commonly $1-200 per kilo on the plate for species that sell for $8-25 per kilo to the fisherman.

Why not? The reason is simple. People’s eating habits wouldnt change much if there were no fish: they would eat as much and probably go to restaurants just as often. Restaurants would simply sell some other food; processors would clean other foods; wholesalers would sell other foods. If I were modelling this, I hence also wouldn’t add a multiplier to commercially captured fish just because there were downstream uses to the fish. Unlike the downstream uses of some natural resources, there are perfectly good substitutes for fish.

The 1200 AUS per kilo on the plate sounds outlandish to me. Caviar-territory, not any species I have ever ordered in a restaurant. Maybe a zero too many?

I would say the biggest problem with this series is that Bob writes unclearly.

Australia likely has the most expensive fresh fish in the world already

is spectacularly wrong.

Relying, Bob Macdonald-style, on unreferenced personal travel anecdotes alone, I can list five countries I have personally visited where fish prices – fresh, frozen, restaurant, supermarket, local AND imported – are significantly higher than ours.

You are a fool.