8 results
Industry
Environment
PROJECT NUMBER • 2018-212
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Establishing an industry recovery strategy for the Area 3 zone of the Western Australian Abalone Managed Fishery

The Southern Seafood Producers (Western Australia) Association in conjunction with the Abalone Industry Association of Western Australia hosted a two-day workshop (the workshop) at the Swan Yacht Club in East Fremantle on the 12th and 13th of June 2019. The aim of the workshop was to...
ORGANISATION:
Southern Seafood Producers (WA) Association

Trials of oceanographic data collection on commercial fishing vessels in SE Australia

Project number: 2022-007
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $347,802.00
Principal Investigator: Ian Knuckey
Organisation: Fishwell Consulting Pty Ltd
Project start/end date: 31 Jul 2022 - 30 May 2025
Contact:
FRDC

Need

Australia’s fisheries span a large area of ocean. Australia has the world’s third largest Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), with an area of over 8 million km2. This zone contains mainly Commonwealth managed fisheries, with State jurisdictions mainly in coastal waters up to the 3 nautical mile limit. Australia's total wild-catch fisheries gross value of production is $1.6 billion, of which 28% is from Commonwealth fisheries and 72% from the smaller coastal inshore fisheries managed by state jurisdictions. The wildcatch fisheries sector employs about 10,000 people across Australia (https://www.awe.gov.au/abares/research-topics/fisheries/fisheries-and-aquaculture-statistics/employment).

The commercial fishing industry has a network of thousands of vessels working mainly in inshore waters around Australia. They can supply a potential platform for extensive and fine scale spatial and temporal monitoring of the waters of the continental shelf (0-1200m), from the surface to the ocean floor. Given that their livelihoods depend on it, they have a keen understanding of oceanographic conditions with respect to fish behaviour, feeding and spawning and the various oceanographic factors that may influence this. In some fisheries (e.g. surface tuna longlining), fishers eagerly seek and use readily available fine-scale oceanographic data such as sea surface temperature and sea level, to improve their targeting and achieve higher resultant catch rates. For many other fisheries, however, it is the fine-scale sub-surface oceanographic conditions (feed layers, thermoclines, temperature at depth etc) that have a critical influence on their fishing dynamics. Unfortunately, this type of oceanographic data is far less readily available. Although fishers and scientists know these factors are important, the time series of fine scale spatial and temporal data relevant to fishery operations is not available to include in stock assessments. As a result, it is often assumed that variations in catch rates reflect changing stock abundance, when it may simply be a result of changing oceanographic conditions.

Marine scientists collect a vast range of oceanographic data using satellites, subsurface drones, and static and drifting buoys. Sea surface data, however, is much easier and more cost-effective to collect at high spatial and temporal resolutions than sub-surface data. Hence, understanding of sub-surface oceanographic conditions tends to be derived from modelling more than actual measurement. This may be sufficient at a wide-scale global or continental level, but it is not adequate at the fine-scale spatial and temporal resolution required for fisheries management.

The use of commercial fishing gear as a research data platform has been increasing in popularity internationally (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2020.485512/full). A number of groups in Europe have been doing this for a decade (e.g Martinelli et al 2016), and New Zealand are also now involved (https://www.moanaproject.org/te-tiro-moana). However, this approach has yet to be implemented in Australia in a coordinated way. In particular, our approach dictates open access data served through the IMOS Australian Ocean Data Network (www.aodn.org.au) that can be collected once and used many times.

In this project we intend to instrument seafood sector assets (e.g Trawl Nets, longlines, pots) with fit-for- purpose quality-controlled (QC'd) temperature/pressure sensors to increase the sub-surface temperature data coverage around Australia’s shelf and upper slope regions (0-800m) at low cost. Not only will this assist in the collection of data at relevant spatial and temporal scales for use by fishers, but it will also provide a far more extensive level of QC’d data to oceanographers in near real time (NRT) for evaluation and ingestion into data-assimilating coastal models that will provide improved analysis and forecasts of oceanic conditions. In turn, this will also be of value to the fishing sector when used to standardise stock assessments.

Martinelli, M., Guicciardi, S., Penna, P., Belardinelli, A., Croci, C., Domenichetti, F., et al. (2016). Evaluation of the oceanographic measurement accuracy of different commercial sensors to be used on fishing gears. Ocean Eng. 111, 22–33. doi: 10.1016/J.OCEANENG.2015.10.037

Objectives

1. Effective installation and operation of oceanographic data collection equipment on network of commercial fishing vessels using a range of common fishing gear
2. To provide QC’d data direct to fishers in near real-time to assist in habitat characterisation and the targeting of effort
3. To cost-effectively increase the spatial resolution of sub-surface physical data collected in Australia’s inshore, shelf, upper-slope, and offshore waters by fitting commercial fishing equipment from a variety of gear types with low-cost temperature/pressure sensors
4. To make the QC’d temperature depth data publicly available through the IMOS-AODN portal for uptake and use in ways that support safe maritime operations the sustainable management of marine resources, and improves understanding of drivers of change.

Article

Final Report • 2024-11-07 • 7.45 MB
2022-007-DLD.pdf

Summary

Working with IMOS and oceanographers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Fishwell Consulting engaged its established networks across the Australian commercial fishing community to harness the capacity of commercial fishing vessels in environmental data acquisition. Deployment of temperature/depth sensors on commercial fishing vessels was shown to augmentand complement more expensive data collection platforms (e.g. ocean gliders, remote operated vehicles, Argo floats, dedicated research vessels) to provide much needed sub-surface temperature data to improve ocean circulation models and forecasting capacity. In proof-of-concept trials conducted over twelve months (from May 2023), more than 30 fishing vessels and their fishing gear were equipped with temperature sensors and data transmission equipment. These trials yielded more than 2.8 million data points from the sea surface to 1,214m depth considerably expanding existing data records. In particular, waters previously poorly observed, including the Great Australian Bight, Joseph Bonaparte Gulf, and the Gulf of Carpentaria, yielded valuable sub-surface temperature data.
Environment
PROJECT NUMBER • 2019-036
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Implementation of dynamic reference points and harvest strategies to account for environmentally-driven changes in productivity in Australian fisheries

The need to adapt stock assessment methods and harvest strategies to explicitly and justifiably account for shifts in productivity has been recognised by the AFMA Resource Assessment Group for the Southern and Eastern Scalefish and Shark Fishery (SESSF), not least as a result of clearly evident...
ORGANISATION:
Pisces Australis Pty Ltd
Environment
PROJECT NUMBER • 2018-034
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Effects of climate change and habitat degradation on Coral Trout

Fishes are at considerable risk from changing environmental conditions because they are, for most part, unable to regulate their body temperature. Exposure to high temperatures may therefore compromise critical biological functions, resulting in reduced performance, fitness and ultimately survival....
ORGANISATION:
James Cook University (JCU)

Evaluating the Effects of Seismic Energy on Pinctada maxima Pearl Oysters

Project number: 2019-170
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $12,103.20
Principal Investigator: Mark Meekan
Organisation: Australian Institute Of Marine Science (AIMS)
Project start/end date: 19 Mar 2020 - 30 Dec 2021
Contact:
FRDC

Need

Recent studies into the effects of seismic energy on molluscs have demonstrated a number of cumulative and sub-lethal impacts that indicated impairment of immune systems, cellular damage and adverse changes in behaviour. In scallops, cumulative exposure to seismic energy resulted in increased rates of mortality after 120 days (R Day et al. (2017)). These findings are of critical importance to the pearling industry, which relies on the harvest and husbandry of pearl oysters in coastal shelf water . Pearl oyster crops are typically 2 years duration, so long term effects will have a chronic sub-lethal effect on pearl production. In addition, as the oysters were still not fully recovered at the day 180 sampling, there is concern that the long recovery time may result in a reduction of the reproductive output for up to one year. Energetically compromised oysters will have a reduced reproductive output, and a higher proportion of male oysters, as egg production is more energy intensive.

This would have major ramifications for recruitment into the wildstock pearl oyster fishery and the pearling industry it underpins.

To these ends it became apparent that a 4th sampling round was critical in order to provide a condition data from the oyster sample set after 360 days; so that the responses of the oysters to seismic treatment may be better understood after the completion of one year – bearing in mind that at different times of the year oysters do different things.

The overarching objective of this experiment is to measure the impact of seismic surveys on wild harvested pearl oysters in a way that provides information that is useful to stakeholders in the pearl production and oil and gas industries and to the managers of these resources. The uncertainty surrounding the long-term impacts of seismic surveys on the health of pearl oysters and their pearl production capacity is the key driver of this study.

Objectives

1. Assess the impact seismic operations have on mortality of P. maxima: (a) The ranges at which these impacts occur and (b) the time period these impacts occur.
2. Assess the impact seismic operations have the on growth and health of P. maxima with increasing range and time from exposure to a seismic source (with respect to a. Immunology
b. Physiology
c. Morphology
d. Gene expression
e. Growth and f. Mortality
3. Whether there are long-term health impacts that could reduce the reproductive capacity of the oysters, potentially affecting recruitment. This will be achieved by visual observation and categorisation according to photographic standards of: (a) Gonad index & (b) Sex
Environment
PROJECT NUMBER • 2019-062
PROJECT STATUS:
CURRENT

Knowledge to improve the assessment and management of Giant Mud Crabs (Scylla serrata) in Queensland

Researchers from the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF) Queensland, CQUniversity (CQU) and the Department of Primary Industries (DPI) NSW Fisheries are collaborating on a Fisheries Research and Development (FRDC) co-funded research project on mud crab populations in Queensland. The...
ORGANISATION:
Department of Primary Industries (QLD)
SPECIES