3 results

Travel bursary: Sustainable Ocean Summit 2017, Canada

Project number: 2017-142
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $18,000.00
Principal Investigator: Aaron Irving
Organisation: Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC)
Project start/end date: 15 Nov 2017 - 30 Dec 2017
Contact:
FRDC

Need

Australia possesses significant coastal and near coastal oil and gas reserves within its continental shelf. It follows that oil and gas exploration (especially seismic) is also significant; especially in the the Bass Strait, Great Australian Bight and North-Western 'Kimberley' areas of Australia. Up until recently, the offshore regulatory framework which includes assessment of effects on the aquatic environment and engagement with other users has been somewhat nebulous and Offshore Industry driven, with the development of aquatic environmental benchmarks being based on the same process as offshore OH&S and butressed by disputed sometimes irrelevant science.
Seismic expoloration in recent years has seen increased interaction between different aquatic ecosystems and marine users, resulting in a "contact" situation that was initially calamitous; but which has resulted in significant investment in Marine biological R&D, an increase in the deployment of the precautionary principle and marine environmental policy innovation.

Johnathon Davey (SIV) and Aaron Irving (NAC) will deliver a presentation that will draw on a number of aquatic environmental effects research project where Australia's fishing sectors were or are driving, policy innovations that we assisted in driving or supporting and case studies including the pearling Industry story, to provide a snapshot of the exciting work being undertaken in Australia currently in the marine environmental space with regard to the effects of seismic surveying and the ability for different users to play together successfully.

Objectives

1. TO discuss issues relating to fisheries interactions in the marine environment

Final report

Author: Johnathon Davey
Final Report • 2017-12-01 • 645.12 KB
2017-142-DLD.pdf

Summary

The World Ocean Council (WOC) Sustainable Ocean Summit (SOS) was held from 29 November to 1 December 2017 in Halifax, Canada,.
The SOS 2017 theme was “The Ocean Sustainable Development Goal (SDG 14): Business Leadership and Business Opportunities”

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.
Industry
PROJECT NUMBER • 2019-126
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Assessing the biosecurity risk of uncooked whole and eviscerated barramundi and grouper in relation to exotic viruses

Presently, the Australian Barramundi farming industry enjoys freedom from numerous internationally significant diseases including all from the Megalocytivirus genus of iridoviruses. These diseases are known to be causing severe impacts on farmed Barramundi and other species in southeast Asia and...
ORGANISATION:
Future Fisheries Veterinary Service Pty Ltd (FFVS)