Minimising gear conflict and resource sharing issues in the Shark Bay trawl fisheries and promotion of scallop recruitment
There is an urgent need to develop an understanding of the level of gear interaction between the prawn and scallop sectors and whether this may be a cause for the recent low scallop recruitment (and subsequent catches) in the fishery and if scallop fishing negatively impacts on prawns. This urgency was noted at a recent workshop reviewing the research and management needs in the Shark Bay trawl fisheries. Both sectors (prawn and scallop) support the need to fully and rigorously address the issue of gear interactions in those areas of the fishery where the distribution of the target species overlap. Scallop fishers are concerned that repeated trawling by the prawn fleet on scallop grounds may be affecting scallop recruitment. The use of adaptive management techniques such as trialling spatial closures within specific areas of the scallop fishery will provide key information about the usefulness of this management approach for the short-lived and sedentary scallop species Amusium balloti and to assess the impact of the closures on the capture of migrating prawns. This project will be used as a pilot study to assess whether closures can assist increase scallop recruitment and if area closures could be used as a possible management strategy in the future. Completion of this project should therefore result in information required to help optimise the use of these resources and assist in resolving the resource sharing conflicts between sectors within the region.
Developing specific models of water and scallop larval movements within Shark Bay along with an assessment of the relevant environmental variables (eg. SST) would also provide insights into the potential causes of the relatively low level of scallop recruitment in areas that were traditionally reliable scallop grounds.