Cover Story

The Lone Trawler

Consistently big catches like this one are nothing new to this trawler, The Ocean Harvest, owned by Raymond’s father Bill Passey and Gary Kessell of Australia Bay Seafoods. The Total Allowable Catch for this fishery is two million kilos a year. The Ocean Harvest has never taken half that much and it always returns full.

Bill Passey’s Ocean Harvest pioneered the sprawling Finfish trawl fishery that extends from north and east of the Territory coast, across the Gulf of Carpentaria, and north to the Australian Fishing Zone that forms its border with Indonesia and Timor Leste. The vessel still has the only trawler license for that immense fishery, while on the Indonesian side of the line there are 4000 trawlers currently operating. “It is one of the most under-utilised resources of fish on earth,” explains Mr Passey. “The fishery is so big, that we, as the only licence holder, couldn’t possibly work the fishery from end to end in a lifetime.”

While others failed because they brought in ill-suited gear from down south, Mr Passey developed his gear to suit the fishery...

Mr Passey’s assessment of the fishery’s productivity is shared by the experts. According to an NT Government spokesman, the sustainability of the fishery has been audited independently and has been awarded the highest level of accreditation. It’s for this reason that Mr Passey is lobbying Government to grant an expansion of the Finfish trawl fishery. If new licences were to go on offer, he would keenly compete for them against other Australian and international fishing companies.

Twenty years ago, Mr Passey pioneered that isolated area, travelling 36 hours from the coast before he even dropped a net into the water. Before Ocean Harvest began trawling that fishery, Asian trawlers placed big pressure on its fish population. Thirteen Thai trawlers were working inside the Australian Zone, taking an estimated 10 million kilos a year, when Bill began working those waters.

Bill Passey came north from Cervantes in Western Australia, where he bought his first boat when he was just 18. He worked in the crayfish industry there for 22 years before seeking his fortune further north. In 1987 he sailed to Darwin and went north to the deepest water he could find, into the area that today is called the ‘Timor Box’. Straddling the Indonesian border, he helped develop the drop line Gold Band Snapper fishery there.

Then on the Darwin wharf he happened to watch a foreign trawler unload 100 tonnes of fish, and was duly inspired. Within 24 hours he was cutting five inch steel to make a trawling rig. If they could do it, he could do it. While others failed because they brought in ill-suited gear from down south, Mr Passey developed his gear to suit the fishery.

Operating from Darwin and Gove, Ocean Harvest was doing frozen fish and exporting to Asia and the USA. But the market was crying out for fresh fish. Mr Passey realised that increased shelf life could occur when, as in the pasteurisation of milk, you raise the temperature of the milk then drop it sharply. “We pulled fish out of 30 degree water and dropped them into zero degree ice,” recalls Mr Passey. “Suddenly we had a 30-day shelf life when we usually would only have 10. That became a key issue for developing markets and business.”

Mr Passey was appalled by the damage trawlers were doing to the sea bottom and admits to doing the same when he started, “because I didn’t know any better.” But he soon decided to do something about it, so he redesigned the gear to get up off the ocean floor and into the water where the fish were. He used boards made in Norway that stand up and actually swim, with minimal bottom contact.

Believing that strong environmental practices are good business, Mr Passey and new partner Gary Kessell addressed the issue of unwanted catch by fashioning an exclusion device to the net that keeps sharks, stingrays and turtles out, pushing them back into the ocean. “Sure, I spent a half million dollars developing this net but it’s returned us millions of dollars,” says Mr Passey. “We don’t wear the nets out. The quality of the fish improves. We got our money back tenfold.”

For his contribution to the industry, in 2005 Bill Passey and Gary Kessell of Australia Bay Seafoods were named Icons of the Fishing Industry, and, according to Mr Passey, being an icon is great, but he would much rather get a shot at a second Finfish trawl licence. He quakes at the thought of all those splendid snapper out there dying of old age.

Mining the Ancient Dunes

In setting up the operation, Matilda has spent some $4.5 million on installing the plant and accommodation, including the addition of 47 km of roads connecting the isolated mine site with the newly opened Port Melville on the Apsley Strait. The mineralised concentrate will be trucked to the port and exported to China. The plant is in the centre of a 4 km long deposit to be mined with an estimated 100 000 tonnes of zircon and rutile to be extracted over a three year period.

The mining activity is concentrated 400 m behind the stunning white sand Melville Island beach. The heavy metals were deposited there 120 000 years ago during the turbulent Pleistocene Period in what are today forested dunes. Exploration in the 1960s by United Exploration highlighted the Tiwi Islands as having deposits potentially rich in zircon and rutile, and further discoveries in the early 1990s, by RGC, demonstrated the presence of small, but rich mineral sands deposits similar to those mined on the east coast of Australia four decades earlier.

But it was not until Matilda came to an agreement with the Tiwi Land Council in 2004 that further exploration and mining was allowed to take place in the islands. The Land Council, representing the interests of the Tiwi people, was comfortable with the low-key style of mining, initially to be carried out in a small area over an hour’s drive from the closest settlement at Milikapiti. “Mining doesn’t disrupt the community because it’s so far away,” explains Matilda’s Managing Director Bruce Maluish. “Also, it’s a benign method with no chemicals involved. The area is remote and the infrastructure put in by the company will come in very handy in the future to the Tiwis.”

The mining process is refreshingly simple: Mining is carried out in sections, or ‘panels’, with the excavators taking just 2.5 m off the surface before trucking it to the separator where it’s screened, taking out sticks and debris.

The sand is slurried and pumped to the wet processing plant where the ore is separated in a gravity system by circulating through a set of spirals, separating the heavy mineral from the light mineral. The result is concentrated ore that is stockpiled before transporting it to the port for export, and the residue is pumped back to the site where it came from. “Ours is a very high quality zircon,” says Matilda’s Project Manager Dennis McCamish. “Very clean, free of clay or any trash. The grains are clean after just a short time in the circuit.”

Zircon is currently enjoying record high international commodity prices. It resists high temperatures and chemical attack, and as a result is used in the ceramics industry. Rutile is used in the manufacture of high quality white pigments used in a wide variety of products from cosmetics to plastics and dyes. The minerals are separated in China by Matilda’s client, Astron Chemicals, an Australian company operating out of the northern city of Shenyang.

Matilda employs just 22 people on site (including two Tiwi trainees) with the operation already running at full 24 hour per day capacity. The company forecasts total net cash, before tax, of $40 million over the initial eight years of mining activity.

Site rehabilitation begins immediately after mining is completed. Just a few months after mining started, site restoration has begun on the first areas mined. “We mine in panels and in the first mining panel, the sand’s already been returned. It’s been reshaped to what it was and top soil and seed has been replaced. It’s already starting to turn green,” says Mr Maluish.

Seeds of native trees are being collected and will be added to the rehabilitated areas. The seeds will be germinated at the existing, disused plant nursery at Milikapiti, originally operated decades ago by the CSIRO.

Matilda’s exploration program is continuing, with other areas of both Bathurst and Melville Island looking decidedly prospective. “We’re hoping to get something going on Bathurst Island while we’re working here on Melville,” says Mr McCamish. “If we can prove-up enough over there, we’ll put another plant in on Bathurst.”