After a three month campaign by the 780+ members of the Melbourne-based Project Banjo action group, Fisheries Victoria has invited public feedback on a draft Fisheries Notice outlining proposed amendments to regulations pertaining to the killing of rays, skates and guitarfish in Victoria.
Author: PT Hirschfield
PT Hirschfield
I’m a real-life mermaid, writer, underwater photographer and videographer, swimming against terminal endometrial cancer one scuba dive at a time. According to everyone who knows me, I have a serious case of OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Diving), having done over 600 scuba dives. According to my oncologist, I also have terminal recurrent endometrial cancer (you can read more about this in posts throughout this blog e.g. HERE). But as far as I know, everyone is going to die sometime (I just don’t have the luxury of denial). So we may as well all make the most out of the days we have rather than lament the ones we don’t, right? I live in Melbourne, Australia and usually dive on the Mornington Peninsula which makes me feel fully alive! I also love to dive in places like the Great Barrier Reef, Vanuatu, Fiji, the Solomon Islands, Indonesia and the Philippines whenever I get the chance.
Recreational scuba divers have regularly been forced to euthanise banjo sharks that have been caught, mutilated and thrown back beneath the piers of Port Phillip Bay, Melbourne.
Following the well-publicised killing of a huge resident smooth ray on 2 April at Rye Pier Melbourne, that sparked a petition of over 26,000 signatures to ban the killing of rays in Port Phillip Bay, another attack occurred at the same pier on Wednesday evening, 3 May. Four fiddler rays (more commonly known as ‘banjo sharks’) were caught by an unidentified individual on the pier before being dealt a severe cranial split.