Local News

Wet stifles prawn trawl, but seafood still abundant

Geoff Helisma|

 

“We’ve planned for both best and worst case scenarios for Christmas, so we will have an abundance of seafood for everyone,” says Damien Moran, business development officer at the Clarence River Fishermen’s Co-Operative.

He said the fishing fleet had “just started going back to work” following the recent severe weather event.

“At the moment, due to the minor flooding, our trawlers aren’t trawling the river, but soon as the fresh pushes the prawns down from the top of the river we could be looking at fairly substantial catches,” he said, “and also for the ocean.

“Once the [flood] water subsides a little bit and most of the debris floating in the river clears out we’ll be right to go.

“Then they [school prawns] size up really quickly in the ocean, due to different feed and those sorts of things; so within a week or so they could be on out in the ocean.

“When it calms down a little bit, hopefully our guys will be back into it before Christmas.”