Commercial fishing logbooks

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

Fisheries Queensland uses this catch and effort data to manage the state’s fisheries in a sustainable way.

Recording information in logbooks

The information that you provide in your logbook returns is used for fisheries management and research purposes. So it's important that you 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 accurately identify and report species.

Logbook examples

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

Buyers

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 animal (TEP) logbook (PDF, 64KB) 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 Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry. To do this, you must report all interactions in your TEP logbook.

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. There are serious penalties for deliberate interactions or interactions that occur without a WTO approval.

Also consider...

Contact

General enquiries 13 25 23