PROJECT NUMBER
•
2021-007
PROJECT STATUS:
CURRENT
ORGANISATION:
CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere Hobart
TAGS
7 results
PROJECT NUMBER
•
2019-112
PROJECT STATUS:
CURRENT
ORGANISATION:
CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere Hobart
TAGS
SPECIES
PROJECT NUMBER
•
2022-006
PROJECT STATUS:
CURRENT
ORGANISATION:
CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere Hobart
TAGS
PROJECT NUMBER
•
2019-124
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED
Shared science and Indigenous knowledge to support fisheries capacity building in Torres Strait
This report presents the results of a collaborative science capacity building project involving CSIRO researchers and Torres Strait Islander Fishing Industry representatives. Project participants worked together in the development and delivery of science capacity building programs tailored to each...
ORGANISATION:
CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere Hobart
TAGS
SPECIES
PROJECT NUMBER
•
2017-010
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED
A re-examination of underlying model assumptions and resulting abundance indices of the Fishery Independent Survey (FIS) in Australia’s SESSF
The model-based Fishery Independent Survey (FIS) for the Southern and Eastern Scalefish and Shark Fishery (SESSF) was developed in the lead up to the first survey in 2008 and is unique in a fisheries context in that it differs from a random stratified design, thereby allowing considerable...
ORGANISATION:
CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere Hobart
TAGS
SPECIES
Revisiting biological parameters and information used in the assessment of Commonwealth fisheries: a reality check and work plan for future proofing
Project number:
2019-010
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure:
$189,065.00
Principal Investigator:
Karen Evans
Organisation:
CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere Hobart
Much effort has been placed over the last couple of decades on the development of harvest strategies, stock assessments, risk assessments and the strategic use of ecosystem models to facilitate meeting the needs of the Commonwealth’s Harvest Strategy Policy. A focus on modelling to improve fisheries management has required effort towards method development. However, little effort has been made towards revisiting and updating the biological parameters that fundamentally underpin such modelling (e.g. growth rates, age and size at maturity, natural mortality rates, dietary information, mixing rates and stock structure) and the tools or methods used to derive them. As a result, most models now rely on parameters and community dietary data derived from information collected during the 1970s-1990s, (e.g. available maturity ogives for blue-eye trevalla are over 20 years old), or information that is borrowed from other regions or species. Whether such old or borrowed values are now representative for commercial Australian fish species is unknown but many factors point to major changes occurring in our marine environment. Australian waters in the south east and south west are climate hotspots and, overall, Australian waters have warmed faster than the global average. Key components of the productivity of marine fish (growth, maturity, and recruitment) are expected to be undergoing directional changes under a changing climate and it is entirely possible that there have been changes in fundamental productivity parameters for some Australian stocks. The reliance of current assessments on what is likely to be out-of-date information leads to increased uncertainty, which propagates into management decisions. Without an understanding of any changes in biological parameters and how any change might impact assessment frameworks, determining whether current management measures are ensuring sustainability becomes highly uncertain.
1. Identify the origin of current biological information used in assessments of species (including empirical stock assessments and ecosystem modelling efforts) carried out under the Commonwealth Harvest Strategy Policy, including the pedigree of the information (provenance, age, appropriateness of methods used).
2. Assess the implications and risks associated with using dated and borrowed information in assessments currently used for informing fisheries management, including the scale of any risks and the species for which a change in biological parameters used in assessments has the greatest impact.
3. Identify the methods that might be applied to update priority biological parameters, including a review of the efficacy and applicability of novel methods and approaches developed in recent years.
4. Articulate a work plan including appropriate sampling regimes required for updating priority biological parameters used in assessments for those species identified as being at most at risk.
Final report
Authors:
Karen Evans
Elizabeth A. Fulton
Cathy Bulman
Jemery Day
Sharon Appleyard
Jessica Farley
Ashley Williams
Shijie Zhou
Cumulative impacts across fisheries in Australia's marine environment
Project number:
2018-020
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure:
$391,000.00
Principal Investigator:
Beth Fulton
Organisation:
CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere Hobart
The need for cumulative impact assessment (CIA) is increasingly being recognized. The development process for Australia's Harvest and Bycatch Policies, and their associated guidelines have reinforced the need for assessment of cumulative impacts, and the EPBC Act has also explicitly required consideration of cumulative impacts.
Where multiple activities occur or are planned, an understanding of their combined effects on the environment is necessary to address policy requirements and achieve sustainability. The concept of cumulative impact assessment is not new – indeed cumulative assessment has been recognized for many years, and a range of methods have been proposed around the globe. However, no methodology for undertaking cumulative assessments has been accepted nationally or globally. In addition to considering the impacts across all fishing sectors (commercial, recreational, indigenous, as required by recent changes to the Fisheries Administration Act 1991) and all fisheries, there is also an increasing need to consider other users of marine resources and coastal waters (e.g. renewable energy, shipping etc), especially where space crowding may be an issue.
Target species stock assessments typically consider the species of interest as well as other sources of fishing mortality (e.g. discards), but they do not usually consider their effects on other fisheries sectors or the effects of other sectors on the focal fishery. CIA methods therefore need to consider interactive and indirect effects. To date, interactive effects are often viewed as additive (simple linear addition of one impact to another) with little consideration given to synergistic, antagonistic or non-linear effects. While the ERAEF toolbox used for assessment of bycatch and protected species has some potential options for cumulative impacts (e.g. SAFE method), at this stage they are insufficient for moving to the scales and complexities across multiple fishing sectors and fisheries.
Thus, sustainable fisheries management requires new approaches that consider all sectors and all fisheries and how they impact the environment. Such CIAs will be challenging given that empirical data are often lacking - a dedicated research effort is needed.
1. Undertake a two part review. This first part being to review existing cumulative impacts literature on methods applied elsewhere in the world, to produce design principles for a scalable cumulative impacts approach
and a synthesis of current benchmark methods and gaps in methods that must be filled to deliver Australian needs. And the second part being a global ERA review to identify cumulative impacts seen in other fisheries, with the specific focus of this review as specified by the AFMA led ERA/ERM working group – including looking: (i) at the assessment methods used elsewhere
(ii) their information needs and context
(iii) the strengths and weaknesses of the different approaches
(iv) synergies and efficiencies that can be adopted
and (v) recommend cost-effect ERA/ERM integration of additional methods that have been found to be appropriate given an AFMA context.
2. Characterise cumulative issues complicating cumulative impact assessments and, via a methods scan, deliver a list of options for addressing these issues
3. Develop a cumulative impacts framework that structures the sequence of analyses done for each assessment based on the characteristics of the sectors and ecological components involved– target, bycatch and protected species, and habitats and ecological communities
4. Perform an Australia-wide cumulative impacts assessment, with fishery-specific results, for (i) commonwealth fisheries across ecological components, (ii) indigenous and recreational sectors that interact with commonwealth fisheries for these components and (iii) and state and recreational fisheries where they overlap with Commonwealth fisheries.
Final report
Authors:
E.A. Fulton
Piers Dunstan
Rowan Treblico
Final Report
•
6.18 MB
2018-020-DLD.pdf
The world is changing more rapidly than any one individual can track. The Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (1999) (EPBC Act) requires for all human activities, such as fisheries, to be sustainable not only in isolation but in combination with other anthropogenic activities and the general state of the environment. It is difficult for fishery managers and operators to comply with this requirement without appropriate assessment methods. In addition, trying to understand the complete state of an ecosystem and all its interacting parts is a substantial and challenging task, especially for a nation with national waters as large and diverse as Australia’s.
In response researchers from the CSIRO and the University of Adelaide set about reviewing existing tools used to undertake Ecological Risk Assessments (ERAs) or Cumulative Effects Assessments (CEAs). This information then formed the basis for developing a new Cumulative Effects Assessment framework which was applied to 409 species around Australia to understand what the cumulative effects of fisheries are on Australia’s marine systems. This understanding and the recommendations made around strengthening existing assessment methods used by the Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) and other fisheries regulatory agencies will place Australia in a better place to ensure it is not only meeting regulatory requirements, but supporting sustainable industries and helping to coordinate across government agencies to safeguard healthy marine ecosystems into Australia’s future.
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