The requirement to complete assessments against ESD objectives has increased dramatically during the past
few years. These include the changes at the Commonwealth level incorporated within the new Environment
Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act as part of their implementation of the Oceans Policy. There are
also a variety of requirements within each jurisdiction to meet general government commitments to ESD,
particularly when these are explicitly part of their fisheries and/or environment legislation. Finally, completing
such assessments, and more importantly being able to gain some form of environmental accreditation, is likely
to become increasingly important for market access and leverage in the coming years. Having a consistent and
national approach to deal with these issues, one that minimizes the level of duplication is, therefore, a high
priority for all jurisdictions and industry sectors.
The previous FRDC project 2000/145 developed the conceptual framework and guidelines to enable reports on
the contribution of a fishery to ESD. Because it was the first step in a series of linked activities, the project was
not designed to develop the associated standards and benchmarks to allow systematic assessments of these
reports by third parties.
In the absence of nationally agreed ESD assessment 'standards', each of the stakeholder groups that review
the ESD reports would be forced into a position of having to develop and apply their own set of standards. This
could lead to significantly different outcomes depending upon which agency conducts the review, and potentially
who within the “auditing agency” reviews the report. Such a situation is likely to result in a high level of
uncertainty.
There is also a need to begin developing the tools to assess the impact of managment actions across all
aspects of ESD in an integrated fashion. This task will require an examiniation of the types of linkages that
need to be made and the mathematical/programming tools that will be appropriate to assess the effects of
different management options.
The ESD Reference Group (which includes representatives of all major stakeholders) met in November 2001
and agreed that there was a requirement to develop a set of projects to achieve the transition from ESD
Reporting to Assessment. As an initial step, a project application (2002/086) was submitted on behalf of the
project team to provide the resources to scope out and develop the activities required. These were to generate:
1. Current Best Practice Manual - Consolidate from a variety of sources the current “Best Practise” options for
the objectives, performance measures, indicators and management responses needed for ESD assessments.
2. Tools to Integrate across the components of ESD - This will develop the methods to enable the integration
and assessment of possible management responses across all the elements of ESD – (economic, social and
ecological dimensions)
3. Test Bed to Examine Options - Test and develop the options to assist with the selection of suitable
objectives, indicators, and management responses and particularly what combinations are appropriate.
The ESD project team met in February 2002 and confirmed that the activities required were best completed as
parts of one scoping project that would run from April 2002 – November 2002 from which a series of linked
projects would be developed. These proposed activities are summarised below.
· Given the strong need by most jurisdictions (and other external parties) to have some guidance on what is
acceptable performance with regards to objectives, indicators etc for fisheries as soon as possible, this scoping
project would produce the first edition of the “Best Practice” report/manual by November 2002 based on
information currently available. It is envisaged that a follow up project would be submitted that would update
this manual at 6-12 month intervals.
· A series of workshops and discussions would be held to gain an understanding of the inter-connectedness
across the elements of ESD (social, economic and ecological) and initiate an examination of the potential
methods/models to enable their integration and predict flow-on effects. It is envisaged that this first stage would
concentrate on examinations within a single fishery. It was recognised, however, that there will be a need to
expand the scope of these assessments to include “across fisheries” and ultimately “across industries” over the
next 2 –5 years. The outcomes of the preliminary work would be used to produce a longer term, more
comprehensive project application for the December 2002 round.
· Finally, the gaps and level of completeness of the elements contained within the first edition of the “Best
Practice” manual and the initial discussions and preliminary model testing of the methods for integration would
provide the information needed to develop the application for the “Options Test-Bed” project by December 2002.
The ESD Reference group would provide input on progress and the content of the new applications at meetings
scheduled for June and November 2002 respectively.

Models are urgently required that will allow stock assessment for fisheries in which a significant component of the catch is taken by recreational fishers, where these models will rely on abundance indices from the commercial fishery, occasional length or age composition samples from the total catch and occasional estimates of total catch. Given the expense associated with recreational surveys, there is a need for the development of an approach that would allow determination of an appropriate frequency for such creel censuses in order that they might provide the data necessary to achieve a specified level of precision from the resulting stock assessment. A method is required that will allow an assessment of the value of data derived from commercial fisheries statistics for use in assessing the stocks that are shared by recreational and commercial fishers, prior to making final management decisions on catch re-allocation from the commercial to the recreational fishing sector.

The management of northern elasmobranchs has a strong need for research to address local and regional management issues. The need is fundamental, the Northern Shark Stock Assessment Review Workshop (QLD, NT, WA and the Commonwealth), Broome 2000, identified the lack of species identification in NT and QLD catches in target and bycatch fisheries as a major concern. This has been clearly recognised at State/Territory, national (NAFM) and international (FAO, IUCN) levels. The sustainability of these species is also an explicit priority with stakeholders. The Northern Australian Fisheries Management (NAFM) Workshop (QLD, NT, WA and the Commonwealth) identified research into elasmobranchs as high priority in 1998, 1999, 2000 and 2001. The NAFM Workshop agreed to write to FRDC to reiterate the high priority of this project. Professor Carl Walters, at a Stock Assessment Workshop in Darwin, examining northern shark catches, also highlighted the issue of inadequate data (Walters and Buckworth 1997) while the National Shark Advisory Group (Nov. 2000) also identified similar issues. There is also a clear need to determine the extent of shared stocks, both within Australia and with Indonesia, to ensure the management scale is appropriate. This project will also address the critical need for information on the biology and catch of sawfishes in northern Australia, research for which Environment Australia have also indicated their support. The first phase of this project (Jul 2001 - Jul 2002) received a high priority from QFIRAC 2000 and was funded by FRDC (FRDC 2001/077). Environment Australia and ACIAR have also funded complementary research on sharks and rays in northern Australia and Indonesia. The current project is critical to ensuring these studies have valid, up to date information on the current catches in northern fisheries. QFIRAC has given this project very strong support, ranking it second of all proposals submitted.

The above Background explains why it is necessary to develop a standardized fishery-independent sampling strategy to provide estimates of relative abundances and demographies of populations of fish in the estuaries of NSW which will be used in conjunction with existing and any new sources of fishery-dependent data (from commercial and recreational fisheries). Before these surveys can be implemented, however, it is necessary to do several pieces of very important research.

Firstly, the correct sampling tools and methods need to be developed. Whilst we acknowledge that commercial and scientific fishing gears are available, these have been designed to capture very specific species and sizes of species. We need to modify these and other gears to develop new techniques that will sample wider size ranges and diversities of fish than is the case for commercial and recreational fisheries. Specifically, we need to determine the best suite of gears to use to catch as wide a size and species range of fishes as possible in as many different habitats as possible.

Secondly, once the best tools have been developed, appropriate spatial and temporal scales of sampling and units of replication need to be determined so that an ongoing survey design based on a rigorous sampling protocol can be implemented for the decades to come.