Abalone Growers Associations in Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia have given their support for the establishment of health monitoring programs of their farm’s stock, and are willing to contribute financially for establishing these and for ongoing monitoring. They see such programs as putting them in a unique position to to enable them to prevent disease in their stock and of meeting future market expectations in relation to health accreditation. This process is threatened by inadequate data on diseases in wild stock, and in some states by limited experience in abalone diagnosis.

Similarly the wild harvest abalone industry recognises vulnerability from a lack of knowledge of the occurrence and distribution of diseases in Australian wild stocks, in a climate where interstate translocation and trade access and quality issues are increasing. They also seek assurances on the health of farmed stock and of stock used for reseeding operations. As a result, the wild abalone sector and fisheries and animal health authorities in these states also strongly support a baseline survey of diseases present in the exploited abalone species, and development of improved surveillance capability.

The project is to acquire this background data on abalone disease, by a health survey covering the natural range of the exploited temperate abalone species. It includes the abalone aquaculture industry and the wild fishery in SA, Victoria, Tasmania, NSW and WA. The project will incorporate associated initial training, permanent presentation on collated results in accessible electronic format (CD and the subprogram’s website), and an abalone disease symposium to develop a net-work of state-based resources for on-going diagnosis, health certification and other shellfish health related functions at reasonable cost to the industry.

Development of the on-going state-based surveillance programs for aquaculture will progress in conjunction with this (without cost to the project), and with consultation with wild fisheries industries and managers, who will also benefit from improved capability for diagnostic and surveillance services.

The environment in which the SBT fishery operates both domestically and internationally has changed in recent years. The domestic fishery, along with other Commonwealth managed fisheries, has come under greater scrutiny as a result of the implementation of the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 and an increased focus on ecosystem-wide impacts of fishing as opposed to a concentration on management of only target species.
Internationally, efforts to ensure that the global catch of SBT is managed under the CCSBT have seen Korea recently join the Commission and Taiwan agree to join the Commission. The Commission has been unable to agree on a TAC and national allocations amongst its members since 1997. This results largely from disagreement about the chances of stock recovery at current catch levels. To address this issue the Commission agreed in November 2000 on a framework for a Scientific Research Program (SRP) and the appointment of an advisory panel of eminent international fisheries scientists to oversee the program. In May 2002 the Australian Government announced funding for the SRP of $3m over the period 2002/03 to 2003/04.
The exclusion of Japanese vessels from the AFZ since 1997 has seen a dramatic reduction in the availability of research funding (in 1995/96 the access fees provided $680,000 for research).
Given these changes research funding and management/policy agencies are keen to ensure that:
- research is well targeted to the current and future needs of the fishery;
- the structures in place for determining research strategies, research projects and priorities and for delivering research are the most appropriate and effective;
- the research funded is that which delivers the highest returns to increasingly scarce research funds;
- research is driven by management needs; and
- Australia has the capacity to deliver and to articulate research results.

Nationally about 25-30% of the Australian population participates annually in recreational fishing. This equates to around 5m people.

The Fishcount survey in Northern Territory in 1995 found 0.8 million of all fish caught (43%) were released. The 1997 RFISH survey in Queensland showed that 24.4 million of all fish caught (53%) recreational were released. A similar survey in 1999 showed that 24.8 million of all fish caught (51%) were released. Rates of captured tagged fish that are released in Suntag in Queensland have risen from 38% in 1990/91 to 54% in 2000/01. The National Recreational and Indigenous Survey found that around 30% of fish caught in Australia were released. The total number of fish released nationally is not yet available although an early estimate is that about 100 million fish are caught annually by recreational fishers. The rate of survival of the released fish is unknown.

Regulation of recreational catches through bag and size limits and participation in catch and release fishing are resulting in the high level of fish being released. Where bag limits are set low (eg 2-3 fish), fishers are undertaking a form of high grading as part of their strategy to get more trophy fish. More and more Australian fisheries are becoming subject to management plans with increased regulation that reduces the numbers of fish that can be kept. Recreational fishers are also becoming more aware of the need to conserve fish stocks and are practicing catch and release as a means of minimising their own impact and maximizing the quality and enjoyment they obtain from fishing. These factors will ensure that the trend towards releasing fish continues to grow.

Information on handling fish is being distributed and used by recreational fishers but this is being done in an ad hoc manner with limited scientific input, not necessarily based on best practices and no overall objectives or delivery strategy.

As a result of this:

1) Fishers catch a lot of fish that are released, particularly undersize target species.
2) There is a considerable amount of information on fish release techniques from Australia and in particular overseas – the problem is not lack of data.
3) The key outcome is management of fisher’s behaviour to ensure they are informed and trained in best practice.
4) This requires a culture change – fisheries management is about managing people not fish.
5) This application uses a different paradigm from usual fisheries projects in that it aims to build on known information and through involvement of industry change behaviour.
6) The key R&D need is to:
a) Develop a package of communication products from known information that fits the target audience.
b) Assess the attitudes and practices of existing recreational fishers to obtain a benchmark.
c) Using a wide range of communication and extension techniques to deliver information on fish survival strategies.
d) Quantify the performance of the communication strategy and recommend changes to improve adoption.
e) Given that this initiative will involve several related projects and future investment to achieve the planned outcomes there is a need to provide a mechanism for a greater level of project management similar to what FRDC provides for a subprogram activity.
7) The strategy will have the added benefit in that it will also inform the broader community on the responsible way recreational fishers are approaching sustainability of fish.

To deliver the planned outcomes will require investing in various aspects of line caught fish survival and a mechanism is required to plan, manage and deliver on this R&D investment. There is a need for the interim steering committee to be formalised to guide the development and implementation of the national strategy.

Over 300 species are caught in the SEF, of which around 100 have commercial value. Twenty five species comprise around 90% of the landed catch. Each year, however, quotas are set for only around 17 species. There are 10 of these species for which there is (or has been) some formal stock assessment (that may not occur every year). For all of the remaining quota species and some of the more important non-quota species, no formal assessment is undertaken and the only assessment that can be made is based on investigation of trends in catch and effort and size distribution and anecdotal input from scientists and industry. There is simply not enough resources to undertake formal stock assessments for the wide range of commercial species landed in the SEF. Yet, each of these species is an important component of the catch of fishers. If the fishery is to continue to operate in its current form and meet the strategic assessments required under the EPBC Act, some form of formal assessment is required.

A recently completed ARF project (Production parameters from the fisheries literature for SEF-like species - Project no R99/0308) demonstrated the utility of using information for "similar" species when conducting assessments for SEF species. Using key parameters such as the virgin biomass, the rate of natural mortality, and the “steepness” of the stock-relationship relationship, a simple formula was developed for identifying “similar” stocks / species and an algorithm was developed for constructing prior probability distributions for these parameters. The resultant distributions can be used in Bayesian stock assessments and as the basis for sensitivity tests when applying other methods of stock assessments. The current project will refine the prior distributions for the production parameters and develop and test methods of stock assessment that use the results of assessments for well-studied species in a formal manner to inform assessments of ‘data-poor’ species. If successful, the methods developed would lead to significant benefits not only for the assessment and management of "data poor" SEF low priority, by-product and by-catch species, but also for a range of new and developing fisheries in Australia.