Victoria’s taste for flake gives fishing co-op new lease on life

Dennis Talbot remembers a time not that long ago when the San Remo Fisherman's Co-operative looked like it might go under.

Almost all of the locally-caught seafood was being sold off-site in Melbourne and many of the fishers were unhappy.

Fisherman Wayne Dredge unloads a catch of shark from his boat at San Remo.Credit:Joe Armao

"We were using imported fish in the fish shop and that wasn't right," Mr Talbot said. "There was quite a bit of infighting with the fishermen."

Mr Talbot, who served on the co-op's board in the mid-1970s and then had another stint about 30 years later, wondered whether it would be forced to close.

"It would have gone close, it was in a bit of trouble. It went through a real bad patch," the now retired fisherman said.

After an upgrade to the site a little over 10 years ago, the co-op's fortunes started improve and it now helps underpin the local fishing industry, providing ice, electricity, fuel and processing facilities for the fishers.

Val Dohl from the San Remo Fishermans Co-operative feeding the pelicans. Credit:Joe Armao

The co-op has helped lure visitors back to San Remo, a small town that sits before the bridge to Phillip Island, with the offer of fish and chips, fresh seafood and a chance to feed the pelicans.

Demand for fish and chips has roared back to life after COVID-19 travel restrictions were lifted, driving up demand for locally caught gummy shark.

General manager Paul Mannix says he was shocked to find local fish was largely unavailable for sale to the public when he took on the top job at the co-op in 2015.

"I saw that as a travesty when you've got the best product coming out of the Bass Strait and then you're waving goodbye to it up the South Gippsland Highway," he said.

The co-op store then started stocking more crayfish in tanks in addition to fresh fish. They branched into selling fresh octopus and in recent weeks introduced a pickled octopus line.

Last year the co-op processed 20 tonnes of gummy shark, the vast majority of which is sold for fish and chips.

The co-op was established in 1948 and accommodated up to 60 couta boats at the time but numbers have dwindled over the years as more family businesses left the fishing industry.

Mr Mannix says membership grew by four this year to 28 members, including 21 who are active fishers. The operation also employs 34 people.

Couta boats lined up at the San Remo Fishersman’s Co-operative in the early days.

The co-op buys seafood from the fishers, which it then sells in the fish and chippery, which provides the primary source of income.

Fisherman Wayne Dredge operates four boats from San Remo and Lakes Entrance. He catches shark and lobster, but has focused less on the latter recently amid rising trade tensions with China, which is the largest market for local crayfish.

Mr Dredge expects it will take at least two or three years for the trade dispute with China to settle down. So now shark accounts for up to 60 per cent of the income for the company Piscari Industries where Mr Dredge is managing director.

He hopes the co-op will help visitors better understand the sustainable nature of Victoria's seafood industry. "Our oceans are in far better condition than our soils," he says. "We talk about paddock to plate. This is ocean to plate."

Wayne Dredge on one of his boats, unloading shark at the San Remo Fisherman’s Co-operative Credit:Joe Armao

There are other fishing co-ops in Victoria, including at Apollo Bay and Lakes Entrance. But across Australia the number has declined over the decades.

Anna Clark, a University of Technology Sydney associate professor of history, said fishing co-ops began to take root around Australia in the first half of the 1900s as the federal government encouraged the expansion of fisheries.

"This was like a 20th Century government-initiated economic expansion," she says.

But Professor Clark said there were fewer fishing families now across Australia as the industry has made way for bigger businesses.

"Places like San Remo are probably the anomaly where there's enough of a community that's still driving this industry."

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