Stan Konstantaras and Max Castle of the Recreational Fishing Alliance of NSW met with NSW Shadow Minister for Lands, the Hon. Mick Veitch MLC, and Country Labor Candidate for Bega, Leanne Atkinson last week, overlooking the notorious Tuross River Mouth bar to hear the Labor commitment of rolling out $250,000 in boating and fishing safety measures along the Far South Coast.
The funding will go towards the installation safety measures such as lighting and sand bar cameras. Max Castle told the Beagle "Web cameras are part of a suite of safety measures, which help with bar crossings along coastal NSW. They allow boat users to access the web cams to check conditions before crossing a bar." “Labor wants to support better, safer boating and fishing along the Far South Coast,” Mr Veitch said.
VIDEO: The Recreational Fishing Alliance (RFA) welcomes Labor’s plans to give $250,000 to safety measures along the Far South Coast Mr Castle said of boat-ramp lights that they are a safety necessity to help prevent accidents on the water.“Most boating accidents actually happen at the boatramp with fishers trying to launch in all manner of conditions. The first thing they have to face is navigating down ramps that are in a variety of conditions to then launch in waterways that have tidal movement with few opportunities to tie off a vessel" "This is repeated when they return to the boatramp, often after dark trying to trailer the vehicle in darkness" "We’ve got a number of boat ramps that are used at night time, particularly in winter, and you can't see what you’re doing,” he said. "Added to this are the safety issues when there are two or more boats trying to launch or come in at the same time". "A good example of a recent boat ramp lighting improvement was at Mosquito Bay where a new solar light has been installed as that boat ramp has a difficult dog-leg to navigate that is all the harder in the dark. This light was installed via funds from the Fishing Trust Fund." Mr Castle said.
