The co-op in Newcastle wants 50 kilograms from each trawler. 

Jason Hewitt, third generation prawn trawler and youngest on the Hunter River at 29, gives off a dry laugh.

He reckons that’s code for “we’ll take whatever you can give us”. 

“It’s the weekend, and it’s seafood weather,” he said.

“That’s them saying, ‘we need a lot of prawns’.”

The Hunter’s prawn trawlers went back to work this week for the first time since agreeing to an indefinite ban on working the Hunter River in November last year.

The ban – dubbed a gentleman’s agreement – came as a result of contamination from the Williamtown RAAF Base.

It followed state government bans on fishing in Fullerton Cove and the upper Tilligerry Creek, and was seen as necessary to protect the region’s seafood reputation.

Then in October this year, to the surprise of a lot of fishers, the bans were lifted.

The Department of Primary Industries issued a statement saying the public could “be confident that seafood for sale is safe to eat”, and the Newcastle Fishing Cooperative began accepting local produce again.

“We were shocked,” Hewitt says on his trawler, named Junior.

“We turned up to that meeting thinking, you know, they were going tell us whether or not they would buy our boats off us. 

“Then the first thing the DPI guy said was ‘full opening of the river from this date’. 

“Everyone just stayed quiet. It was unreal. Even all the crazy fishermen who I thought would abuse them just said nothing.”

And so this week, after a year in purgatory, Hewitt, like the rest of the region’s commercial fishers, found himself back on the water.

Like most of the commercial fishers, Hewitt spent the year off trying to make ends meet – working here and there; catching mud crabs in Karuah and eels in the Myall.

“It was weird, it was like you weren’t yourself,” he said.

“Like you weren’t there ... it’s a gap where you can’t even really explain what you did with your year.”

But not everything has been fixed by the reopening. Old tensions between trawlers from Raymond Terrace and those further down the river – like Hewitt – that were put aside during the ban have resurfaced. 

While consumer demand is still there, Hewitt and many of the other fishers believe the season started too early. That, he says, had made it harder to find a decent catch only a week into the year.

“You know, some of the boats aren’t even going to work now,” he said.

“Some of the older guys, they know it’s too early. The size ain’t good [and] it hurts us more each season.”

Geoff Hyde is one of those people. The veteran of the river at 80-years-old, he went out on Tuesday, but didn’t bother cooking a prawn.

“I went out Tuesday and the prawns were just too little for me so I came back in,” he said.

“For years and years we used to start on the first of December [but] this spoils it. They catch them before the grow. It’s a shame.”

It means the co-op’s request for 50 kilograms won’t come true. 

50 kilograms would be a good day. 100 kilograms would be a great day. Today is neither of those, though.

At 7am Hewitt and his deckhand Matthew Baldwin have been out on the water maybe half-an-hour, and they already know they won’t get anywhere near what they’re being asked for.

They’ve been working a spot called Loggy; a stretch of the north arm of the river between Raymond Terrace and Hexham.

“This is the only place that’s really reliable [but] everyone’s pounding this one little spot,” he said.

“It shouldn’t be like that. First week of the season we should be all spread out.”

Loggy lets them down. On the first haul they only pull in about five kilograms.

“That’d usually be enough to send me home,” Hewitt says.

He persists though, dropping the net for another shot, a little wider, a little deeper, and this time further up the river, towards a spot called Hanging Dog Tree, near Woodberry.

“It’s called that because years ago there was a dead dog hanging from that tree,” he says, pointing.

But the second run comes up the same as the first. Maybe another five kilograms, and Hewitt decides to call it a day.

Robert Gauta, the manager of the Newcastle Fisherman’s Cooperative, says it’s “not surprising” when catch targets aren’t met.

“It can vary on a daily basis,” he said. 

“From memory two years ago early November it was similar. It's never a great opening but things pick up.”

He’s a little more diplomatic about the timing of the opening.

“It was all before my time [but] there’s a group happy catching the smaller stuff up near the Terrace and a group that wants to wait until it gets bigger,” he said.

In some ways though, these are the arguments the commercial fishers should be having.

“It’s good to be back,” Hewitt admits.

“It’s a bit of an honour to prawn. Not many people do it now. We’re a dying race.”