75-year-old Apollo Bay fishing co-op in struggle of seismic proportions

When Markus Nolle retired as a fisherman in 2016, he invested his energy in ensuring Apollo Bay’s next generation of fisherfolk had a future. He now fears that future is being quietly wiped out beneath the waves.

The Apollo Bay Fisherman’s Co-op opened in 1948, originally catching barracuda for the Melbourne Fish Market. 

By the mid-2000s, the barracuda were gone, and sharks and Southern Rock Lobsters were the big ticket catches. Ultimately, a cap on lobster catches was imposed to preserve populations of the species.

“The problem is that we’ve been investing year after year on catching fewer and fewer lobsters, to try and rebuild the population, and in the background, these guys are pulling the rug out from under our feet,” Nolle told the Brolga.

The chair of the co-op board said seismic blasting conducted by oil and gas companies - which uses powerful air guns to fire sound signals through the ocean floor in the search of gas deposits - kills juvenile lobsters. 

“When eggs are released, they float out on the open ocean for two to three years as they go through various planktonic stages, before they finally settle on the reef,” Nolle explained. “They're all getting smashed to bits.”

Mature lobsters, he added, were not immune.

“What the science now tells us is that the blasting does significant and permanent damage to the rock lobsters; it mucks up their balance,” Nolle said. 

The Victorian Government earlier this month opened tender applications for a new petroleum exploration licence across 45,000 square kilometres of ocean between Port Campbell and Warrnambool. 

If approved, it would permit seismic surveys near the Bay of Islands Coastal Protection Reserve.

Nolle said the long-term effects on the lobster industry would be unknown for some years, as it “might take seven to nine years before you even see an impact, because we won't even see [an egg] develop into an undersized lobster for seven years”.

He said the combination of a lobster’s slow life cycle and the flow of the Bass Strait from west to east could ultimately affect lobster supply across the state.

Image credit: Apollo Bay Fisherman’s Co-op