| Porthole 15 Jul 21

FISHING is one of the (mostly) free pleasures of life, but one man’s angling adventure will cost him big time.

A man has been fined for deliberately sinking a boat in South Australia’s St Vincent Gulf to create a reef to attract fish.

The SA Environment Protection Authority (EPA) said CCTV showed the man using another boat to tow the now-sunken vessel from the O’Sullivan Beach Boat Ramp in 2018.

EPA officers found the boat used for towing at a Largs North address, where they also found a GPS location on a device at the house, which led them to the sunken eight-metre boat under 30 metres of water.

Both the EPA and commercial fishers say the act is an example of a growing problem of people creating artificial reefs to improve fishing opportunities – a practice which became illegal in 2016.