THERE are fish, there is money to be made – and then there’s orange roughy.
The species that is more identified with fortunes than just about any other is the subject of a new documentary by Portland fisherman and maritime historian Garry Kerr.
The Orange Roughy Fishery – A Spectacular Boom and Bust is the product of six months’ work last winter, interviewing many of those involved in one of commercial fishing’s last great gold rushes.
And there’s plenty of local involvement, with those who played various parts in the boom interviewed.
They include fishermen Kit Olver, Tom Bibby, Ben Maas and John McHugh, net maker Ian Leck and transport operator Bill Tober, whose late brother Bert also fished the species.
It is the 14th in Mr Kerr’s series of documentaries.
“More than half of them are on fishing subjects,” said the crayfisherman.
“It seemed the logical next step and I was pleased I did it because it was probably one of the most colourful ones I’ve done and most of the protagonists are still around which made it easy.”
And colourful it certainly was – and then some.
“It was cut throat, it was dog eat dog for sure,” Mr Kerr said.
“Because they were all competing for the resource and they were mostly found on those sea mounts.
“I had a brother-in-law in it and the stress of it almost killed him, he had to give it away.”
The stories of money made are legendary to anyone who has ever heard them – in the documentary Mr Leck talks of how two crew members walked into a Hobart pub and ordered the most expensive champagne just so they could spray it on the other patrons there.
The Australian boom came off the back of the establishment of an international market by New Zealand fishers, beginning in the mid 1980s.
“The Australians were able to capitalise on it straight away,” Mr Kerr said.
And they did, fishing sea mounts, or hills, in the Great Australian Bight and Tasmania, where the fish were plentiful.
“When you found a new one (hill), it was like finding a gold mine,” one fisherman says in the documentary.
Mr Olver puts it just as well.
“Jesus there were some fish there,” he says.
So many were caught that nets had to be redesigned to cope with the weights.
And as areas were overfished, new ones had to be found.
It was “like targeting a pimple in 1000m of water,” Mr McHugh says.
And those on shore – including in Portland where the western zone catches were unloaded – were struggling to keep up.
Mr Tober speaks of how Tober Freight had three prime movers and six fridge vans to unload fish “but it wasn’t enough as so much was coming in”.
Filleters were making big money - $7000 a week in the 1990s – as processors supplied a hungry international market.
The likes of Mr Maas worked on roughy trawlers in the 2000s, and he tells of the hairy experiences of working in the ice room, where fish were stored.
“You earned your money,” he says.
“You could fit like 60 tonnes in there and you had to throw them all in.”
There were also the dangers of the areas the fishers went, where the waves are up to 15m high and the winds blow unhampered by any land.
Eventually the party came to an end, particularly when quotas were introduced in the 1990s, though there are small quotas still today – and still fished by Portlanders.
“It was a maritime gold rush like no other,” Mr Kerr said.
The DVD is available at Portland Books and Giftware in Percy St, Paper Nautilus Bookstore in Bentinck St and also by calling Boat Books Australia on 02 9439 1133.
