Steam trawl catches from south-eastern Australia from 1918 to 1957: trends in catch rates and species composition

Haul-by-haul steam trawler catch and effort data for 1918–23, 1937–43 and 1952–57, which cover a large portion of the history of steam trawling in the Australian South East Fishery, were examined in detail for the first time. There were 64371 haul records in total. The catch-rate for all retained catch combined shows a strong decline overall, with a brief recovery during World War II, probably due to increased retention of previously discarded...