Timor Reef Fishery and licences

You must have a licence to commercially fish for demersal or bottom-dwelling fish species in the area of the Timor Reef Fishery in the Northern Territory (NT).

The Timor Reef Fishery is controlled by catch quota. You must hold quota before you can go fishing in the Timor Reef Fishery.

Licences

There are 16 licences issued in the Timor Reef Fishery and 7 boats nominated for fishing.

You can buy a new licence, but existing licences can't be bought or sold.

Commercial fishers can buy, sell and lease individual transferable quota.

Read more about buying, selling or leasing a commercial licence.

Fishing area

Commercial fishing is allowed in a remote region known as the Timor Box.

This area extends north-west of Darwin to the Western Australia/NT border and to the outer boundary of the Australian fishing zone 200 nautical miles offshore.

The fishery has an area of approximately 8400 square nautical miles. Read the image below.

Fishing method

You can use any of the following methods in the Timor Reef Fishery:

• vertical lines
• drop lines attached to or free from a vessel
• finfish long-lines
• baited fish traps.

Read more about commercial fishing in the Timor Reef Fishery in the Fisheries Regulations 1992.

Catch

The majority of the catch is taken using baited fish traps.

Goldband snapper is the primary species taken.

Other key species include saddle-tail snapper, crimson snapper, red emperor and cods.

Byproduct species include small snappers such as:

• moses snapper and darktail snapper
• rock cods
• redspot emperor
• Robinsons seabream.

Fishery management

For more information about the Timor Reef Fishery, read the management framework PDF (439.5 KB).

Fisheries research

For information on the stock status of key species, go to the Fisheries Research & Development Corporation website.

You can also get the stock/management in the NT offshore snapper fisheries for recent research on the stock structure of key species.

Stock/management unit determination in the NT offshore snapper fisheries PDF (896.9 KB)
Stock/management unit determination in the NT offshore snapper fisheries DOCX (1.2 MB)

Find out more about the independent survey of tropical snapper, read the survey of tropical snapper in Northern Territory fisheries PDF (3.0 MB).