Economic and ecosystem impacts of illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing in Northern Australia

Illegal foreign fishing for sharks in Northern Australia has increased substantially over the last two decades. This has likely resulted in declines of shark species abundance, with potentially far-reaching impacts on the ecosystem. This, in turn, could also have indirectly affected the legal prawn, shark, and other fisheries in the region through changed predation patterns and direct removal of targets. The prawn fishery in Northern Australia is currently one of Australia’s most valuable fisheries. Sharks themselves are also a major target species by many Queensland and Northern Territory fishers. In this article, an ecosystem model developed in the Ecopath with Ecosim framework is used to estimate the impacts of illegal shark fishing on the remaining system, and the potential economic impacts on commercial fisheries in the region.