Waste to profit in urchin fisheries: developing business opportunities to ensure fishery sustainability and safeguard reef dependent fisheries from destructive urchin grazing
Indigenous business development opportunities and impediments in the fishing and seafood industry - 'Wave to plate' establishing a market for Tasmanian cultural fisheries
Aboriginal wild catch is aspirational, seasonal and culture-dependent. For these reasons, it does not compete well against large-scale, industrial fishing operations. Addressing the FRDC’s Indigenous Sector strategy to improve understanding and engagement that ‘best support individual and community economic development’ (FRDC 2015), this project aims to develop a niche market of boutique seafoods, together with investigating how the arts and tourism sectors can foster fisheries management for greater Indigenous community benefit.
A Tasmanian Aboriginal engagement framework in fisheries has not yet been developed by government (Lee 2016, in press). This project will create the conditions for extensions development, based upon resetting engagement terms between Indigenous peoples and government, providing a toolkit of self-determining strategies for regional development. Economic models for future development of fisheries can build upon the capacity of Indigenous communities to translate value into benefit in subsequent projects, such as employment opportunities within the network chain of wild catch procurement to presentation.
There is a need to provide best practice guidance that demonstrates Australia’s commitment to international obligations, such as 2007’s UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In Australia, building on the growing jurisprudence that affirms native title rights to land, the High Court in 2013 extended such rights to commercial fishing in the Torres Strait in its Akiba v Commonwealth decision (Butterly 2013). However, judicial recognition of Indigenous fishing or other marine-based rights does not in itself provide specific guidance on how those environmental resources should be managed culturally and economically.
Final report
- access to marine resources for Aboriginal Tasmanians;
- the governance forms, such as a proposed Indigenous Fisheries Advisory Committee and cultural marine planning unit, to assist in decision-making that provide fairness, equity,transparency and opportunities for Aboriginal Tasmanians to develop cultural fisheries that suit local conditions;
- the models for Indigenous rights to resources and business enterprise that provides a best fit for Aboriginal Tasmanian regional development and fisheries management;
- the research directions that require a multi-disciplinary focus; and
- the types of partnerships that can aid in the establishing a market for cultural fisheries.
Phase 2: Traceability Systems for Wild Caught Lobster, via Sense-T and Pathways to Market
Vulnerability of the endangered Maugean Skate population to degraded environmental conditions in Macquarie Harbour
Social Science and Economics Research Coordination Program (SSERCP)
Managing ecosystem interactions across differing environments: building flexibility and risk assurance into environmental management strategies
SCRC: Measuring condition of lobsters to improve management of harvesting around periods of high transport mortality
Annual losses of up to 10% of lobsters during live transport are not uncommon and have a major financial impact. The fishing industry, including processors and operators are seeking ways to avoid this mortality. As deep-water pale lobsters are more susceptible to this mortality, this project will examine their wild physiological condition in great detail and compare it to shallow-water red lobsters.
Mortality events occur mainly around the time of season openings in Mid November so this will the period targeted in this research. Price often falls sharply at this time because of the combined effect of increase in supply and damage to market reputation that occurs when impacted shipments are received. Managing the landing of poor quality lobsters has always been difficult because longer closed seasons would prevent landing of poor quality product but also harms businesses.
Ideally the problem of lobster mortality in shipment would be managed by keeping the fishery open for extended periods but only landing lobsters when their condition is acceptable. The fishery tends to do this on a crude level by discounting the price of pale lobster. However this is not ideal because it impacts the price of some catches of pale lobsters that are good condition, and also allows the shipment of some red lobsters of poor condition. Directly measuring condition is a step towards better management of this issue.
Final report
This project provides the first comprehensive quantitative assessment of the health, physiological and nutritional condition of brindle and red lobsters from four different fishing areas of Tasmania at the start of the 2015 fishing season. Lobsters size (carapace length), baseline concentrations of haemolymph haemocyanin and bicarbonate were shown to be useful predictors of vulnerability to transport.
This information may help improve the management of these lobsters especially if portable meters are used in the field or test kits are developed through future R&D. Recommendations to minimise mortality risk were also made which included ensuring lobsters have recovered from the ground transport stress in holding tanks for several days, minimising emersion duration and reducing temperature prior to packaging.