Commercial fishing logbooks

Commercial and charter fishers operating in Queensland's state-managed fisheries are required by law to complete daily logbooks.

You can submit paper logbooks, or submit your catch information electronically via the Qld eFisher app (if operating in an eligible fishery).

Fisheries Queensland uses this catch and effort data to manage the state’s fisheries sustainably.

Logbook information

The information you provide is used for fisheries management and research. So, you must provide accurate information about:

  • retained catch
  • discarded catch (in certain logbooks)
  • time spent fishing
  • location catch was taken
  • fishing equipment used
  • interactions with threatened, endangered and protected animals (see below).

Use our fish species guides to identify and report species accurately.

Logbook examples

Each fishery is different, so there are different reporting requirements for each fishery. Example pages from paper logbooks are provided below:

Catch disposal records

Charter fishery

Crab fisheries

Line fisheries

Harvest and collection fisheries

Net fishery

Shark and ray fisheries

Threatened, endangered and protected animals

Trawl fisheries

Threatened, endangered and protected animal logbook

The threatened, endangered and protected (TEP) animal logbook is used to report interactions with protected animals. It replaces the species of conservation interest logbook.

Under the Commonwealth Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999, commercial fishers must report all interactions with protected species to the Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water. To do this, you must report all interactions in your TEP paper logbook or via the Qld eFisher app.

Reporting these interactions is necessary to maintain Australian Government Wildlife Trade Operation (WTO) approvals, which allow certain Queensland fisheries to export seafood to international markets and are used in Australia to market sustainably sourced seafood.

The WTO approval also protects commercial fishers against prosecution for unintentional interactions with protected species.

Also consider...