ABSTRACT
Within a geomorphological context of significant vulnerability to degradation (outlined in Chapter 3), various human impacts on the Great Barrier Reef have occurred. One significant impact has occurred due to the operation of various fisheries based on reef resources, including bêche-de-mer, pearl-shell and trochus. Although reef organisms (including corals) have been removed from the Great Barrier Reef since the period of earliest European exploration, the first sustained European commercial fisheries in the Great Barrier Reef were the bêche-de-mer and pearl-shell fisheries. The animals that were harvested formed part of the landscape of coral reefs, and diving for those organisms was concentrated on, and in the vicinity of, those reefs. Large fishing grounds for each of those industries were located in Torres Strait, but the reefs of the Great Barrier Reef were also used extensively and, in some cases, the fisheries extended southwards as far as Moreton Bay. The earliest operation of those European reef fisheries was unregulated and few documentary records describe the beginning of those industries; Bauer (1964, p125) has acknowledged that production statistics for the bêche-de-mer fishery, for instance, were not available before 1884. The period of the historical bêche-de-mer and pearl-shell fisheries also lies beyond the range of oral history sources. However, the later development of those industries is described in Queensland Government records and reports – not least because of increasing concerns about the depletion of resources, and the abuse of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers – and the more recent trochus industry has also been described in oral history sources (Loos, 1982; Ganter, 1994; Reynolds, 2003).
