The harvest by the commercial Northern Territory (NT) Mud Crab Fishery (MCF) has shown dramatic fluctuations over the last 15 years. However, the vast majority this variation is driven by the concentrated harvest of crabs along just one third of the NT mainland coastline; i.e., within the NT component of the Gulf of Carpentaria (NT GoC). 
All areas of the NT MCF experienced a poor harvest (and by inference recruitment) in 2002 and 2003. These events were preceded by two years of what is now considered exceptional recruitment and harvest. These large scale variations are indicative of a broad scale environmental driver such as rainfall.
The management response to the poor harvests post-2001 was a 10 mm increase in the commercial minimum legal size of both sexes in 2006, which applied along the entire coastline. By the time this measure was introduced, the harvest outside of the NT GoC had begun to stabilise, whereas that inside the NT GoC continued to decline.
The stability in harvest outside the NT GoC is now evident through a decadal average and standard deviation (to December 2013) in harvest of 123 t and 15 t, respectively. This contrasts markedly with the corresponding figures from inside the NT G0C; i.e., 246 t and 86 t, respectively.
This presentation will discuss possible reasons as to why these features of the harvest vary along different sections of the NT coastline and the differing impacts of the 2006 management change in these regions.