The below letter was provided to Mr Richard Baines, in reply to his email regarding AFMA’s request for corrections to the reporting Calls for long-term plan to protect threatened species form commercial fishing.
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Dear Richard
Thank you for your email of 17 October 2015 regarding errors in the ABC’s reporting about bycatch in a number of AFMA managed fisheries. I am pleased that you have tried to fix some of these errors. However, there still remain a number of errors requiring your attention.
Firstly, your response that it was HSI and not the ABC that made allegations regarding data omissions is contradicted by your broadcast statement at 1min56secs of your online video where, after listing previous public statements by AFMA published in late April, early May, and in June, you then state;
That was significantly less than the 26 protected species killed in the region revealed in the quarterly report.’
This clearly implies an omission by AFMA and is not attributed to HSI or anyone else. Furthermore, this claim is not supported by the facts including material provided to you by AFMA prior to your story going to air. This material has been publicly available on AFMA’s website since August 2015. I again ask that the ABC issue a correction regarding your claim.
Secondly, despite acknowledgement that the ABC did indeed make a mistake in the reporting of the marine mammal mortalities in the ETBF, there has been no attempt made to correct the broadcast video record or provide a note to the same effect regarding the reference to marine mammal interactions. This is unacceptable.
Finally, your attempted correction of the online story in response to ABC’s error (i.e. to alter the reference to ‘marine mammals’ to ‘marine animals’) has introduced another error. The term ‘marine animals’ includes many species (e.g. all fish species) beyond those included in the protected species data found on AFMA’s website and also provided to you. I am hopeful that this attempted correction was not just trying to ‘minimise’ the apparent significance of the previous error. Either way I hope that this newly introduced error can now be properly corrected.
To help ensure that these errors are correctly fixed, I offer our assistance in reviewing the proposed corrections to ensure that the facts are properly reported. Moreover, we remain very willing to review the ABC’s proposed reporting of Small Pelagic Fishery or other fisheries matters to ensure they are accurate and unbiased.
Kind regards
Dr James Findlay
CEO
30 October 2015