Case study 1. The northern prawn fishery. In Managing Australia’s fisheries under threat of climate change impacts. Report compiled by Parslow, J. and Jernakoff

The Northern Prawn Fishery extends from the Kimberleys in W.A. to the Gulf of Carpentaria in Queensland, over about 6000 km of coastline between 10 S and 17 S (Fig. 1). The region is remote, with very little coastal development or conflicting resource use at present. The boundaries to the fishery are primarily political jurisdictional rather than physical or ecological. This introduction to the fishery will concentrate on the Gulf of Carpentaria where most of the effort and catch is located