Release of CyHV-3 virus will be predicated on a sound understanding of the likely impacts of reductions in carp numbers both in terms of immediate effects and longer term ecological responses. Predicting post-control outcomes is particularly important where there may be permanent or transient impacts that may be negatively perceived. Recognising and quantifying uncertainty around these predictions is a critical component of providing advice on release and communication to managers and the general public.

The essential needs are;
a) A clear conceptualization of the role of carp across ecosystems to enable an expert elicitation of the likely impacts of carp control using CyHV-3.
b) To understand how ecosystems may change under scenarios of carp control by CyHV-3
c) To be able to communicate these predicted changed with defined levels of confidence to the public.

The project will identify particular ecosystem attributes expected to change in response to carp control, for example native fish species diversity and abundance, water quality, algal composition and biomass. These metrics will be selected based on current monitoring programs, and conceptualized into simple diagrams which summarise the likely impacts of carp and carp control. This preliminary understanding will underpin exploration of particular control scenarios in terms of evidence available for making predictions of effects on ecosystem attributes. These predictions will be informed by the published literature and expert elicitation from NCCP management and expert panel members.

For all scenarios, the project needs to provide an assessment of the evidence underpinning the predictions of ecosystem response, including:
• causal relationships between carp abundance and ecosystem attributes, and the role of other variables (e.g. land-use, geographic region)
• identification of knowledge gaps

Objectives
1. Develop a conceptual framework and identify ecosystem attributes expected to change in response to carp control
2. Define attribute metrics and quantify attribute independence
3. Assess the confidence of the scientific evidence underpinning the predicted outcomes
4. Provide outputs that are clearly communicable to the general public and other

The Status of Australian Fish Stocks project is increasing the number of species/stocks to be included but many of these new stocks may fall into the "undefined" category and, because they suggest a lack of assessment and management, they lower the overall impression of the state of fisheries management within Australia. The FRDC National Priority 1 has two targets relating to the "undefined" category. By 2020, the target is to increase the number of species covered in SAFS to 200, and at the same time, to reduce the percentage of stocks classified as undefined to less than 10%. Most major commercial species by value are already included in SAFS, so increasing that number to 200 will mean including many data-poor fisheries making achieving both targets by 2020 difficult. An earlier project (2016-135) disarticulated the undefined category into sub-groups at least one of which should be amenable to data-poor assessment techniques. There is thus a need, within each jurisdiction, to identify which of the new species selected for inclusion in SAFS are likely to be classed as undefined and yet still amenable to a data-poor assessment method. There have been many recent developments with data-poor stock assessment methods and there is thus also a need in all jurisdictions for staff training to develop more local expertise in these new methods and to transfer suitable custom software for conducting such analyses. With the agreement of all parties involved there is a need to then apply and document the particular assessment method used that permits a status determination for each species selected, thereby reducing the number of undefined species.