Courtney et al., Draft:

"The red-spot king prawn fishery accounted for 59% of all sea snake catches and 85% of all mortalities. The reason for this is due to the relatively high catch rate (i.e. mean of 10.23 snakes caught boat-day^-1) combined with a high mortality rate of about 37% and moderately high fishing effort. Red-spot king prawns are a reef-associated species. The post-larval and juvenile prawns utilize reef-lagoons as nursery areas and sub-adults and adults migrate off the lagoons into deeper trawled grounds near the reef. Most of the sea snakes caught in this sector, particularly the olive sea snake A. laevis and the reef shallows sea snake A. duboisii, are reef-associated species. Hence, the high snake catch rates appear to be due to overlapping habitats of the prawns and snakes. The high mortality rate of snakes in this sector may be attributed to bulky, spiky and venomous character of the bycatch crushing, injuring and invenomating the snakes." 

Citation and/or URL

Courtney, A.J., Schemel, B.I., Wallace, R.M., Campbell, M.J. & Mayer, D.J. DRAFT, Reducing the impact of Queensland's trawl fisheries on protected sea snakes. Queensland Department of Primary Industries and Fisheries, Brisbane, Australia

Spatial Coverage

Queensland marine waters. 

Temporal Coverage

2003 - 2008 

Update Frequency

Not applicable 

Other Information

None