Vessel tracking is a satellite surveillance system that tracks and monitors the locations and movement of commercial fishing boats. Vessel tracking units send position reports that include time, date and location.

Vessel tracking helps the department carry out real-time monitoring of the commercial fishing fleet for management and compliance purposes. Data from vessel tracking is used to:

• monitor quota in near real time (e.g. deducting fishing days from individual’s quota)
• monitor compliance with area and seasonal closures (including marine park zones)
• provide intelligence and evidence for investigations
• help validate logbook data on where and when fishing occurred
• provide fishing effort data that is used in stock assessments to estimate the biomass of a fish stock
• help inform fishery management changes that may be needed.

Vessel tracking is required on all commercial fishing boats (primary and tender boats) in the major commercial fisheries including net, line, crab, trawl and harvest (aquarium fish, sea cucumber (beche-de-mer), coral, trochus, crayfish and rock lobster) fisheries.

The department has been using vessel tracking since 1996 as part of ongoing management of several fisheries within Queensland, including the east coast trawl fleet and sea cucumber (beche-de-mer) as well as some net fisheries. The rollout of vessel tracking to the remaining net, line, crab, harvest and trawl fisheries was staged across 2019 and 2020.

Newer vessel tracking units were approved in 2018 following a general market scan, assessment of units against the department’s requirements and trialling on commercial fishing boats. The units were approved on the basis that they meet the specifications set out by the department, be successfully trialled and present a low to medium risk level for the fishery.

Commercial fishers are required to purchase approved vessel tracking units associated with an approved polling rate and data plan for their fishery. The units are required to be installed in accordance with the department’s Vessel Tracking Installation and Maintenance Standard and registered on FishNet Secure. Confirmation of vessel tracking units polling must be received by commercial fishers prior to commencing a commercial fishing trip.

A PI-IAS is a review conducted to assess the impacts, effectiveness and continued relevance of regulations that have been recently made and are in force. Undertaking a PI-IAS requires an agency to focus on:

• whether a problem (requiring regulation) still exists
• the actual (rather than expected) impacts of a proposal
• whether there were any unintended consequences from the regulation’s implementation
• whether the regulation should continue, including whether any amendments should be made.

No. During the vessel tracking review process, the Queensland Government Guide to Better Regulation policy was updated, which led to the change from PIR to PI-IAS.

The PIR is in line with the 2019 Queensland Government guide to better regulations policy.

The PI-IAS is in line with the 2023 Queensland government guide to better regulations policy.

The vessel tracking working group was established to provide operational advice and recommendations to support the review undertaken by the department on the management, implementation and administration of vessel tracking across commercial fisheries.

Members of the working group were appointed for a 2-year period by the department following an expression-of-interest process during 2021.