Mulloway (Argyrosomus japonicus) is a member of the family Sciaenidae, which are commonly known as drums and croakers, and a nearshore coastal (< 100 m depth) species that also occurs in estuaries and nearshore Pacific Ocean and Indian Ocean waters surrounding Australia, Africa, India, Pakistan, China, Korea and Japan. In Australia, mulloway are distributed along the eastern, southern and western seaboards from the Burnett River in Queensland to North West Cape in WA. Mulloway also occur in the north-western Pacific and through the Indian Ocean as far west as Africa (Ferguson 2011, 2012).

Mulloway in South Australia are managed as a self‐recruiting population, with recruitment considered to be dependent upon local spawning within South Australian waters (Sloan 2005).

There is limited information available on the stock structure of mulloway. Genetic-based studies have been done only in Australia and the conclusions from these studies are limited as they were based on samples comprising very few individual fish from only a few locations. Some electrophoresis-based evidence showed that a separate sub-population of mulloway occurs in WA compared to the southern (SA and Victoria) and eastern (NSW and Queensland) seaboards, and that there may be additional population sub-structuring between fish in SA and NSW (Ferguson 2011, 2012).

However, preliminary data based on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) analysis did not appear to support this. No other genetic studies have been reported for the species and therefore the degree of genetic division among populations from different seaboards and oceans is not well known (Ferguson 2011, 2012).

This fishery was certified by the Marine Stewardship Council system in June 2008. Click here to link to the MSC fishery page and to learn more about the MSC fishery certification unit.