14 results

Digital Campaign: Innovation, sustainability, labour retention in Western Australian inshore fisheries - National video stories investment

Project number: 2022-209
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $182,505.00
Principal Investigator: Darryl P. Anderson
Organisation: Anvil Media
Project start/end date: 13 Jul 2023 - 30 Jan 2024
Contact:
FRDC

Need

FRDC has an already developed video and image library, however, does not have the resources to keep it supplied with new and relevant images, or to produce a series of short video clips and capture professional photos to showcase the innovation and sustanability of Australia's commercial fisheries. This is planned as a Phase #1 proof of concept project focusing on fisheries in 3 states: WA, SA and Queensland.

There is a need to produce a digital campaign that encapsulates the stories of commercial fishers and the role of their seafood supply locally and outside of Australia. These fisheries, their people, their fishing techniques and their markets have changed considerably over time. This presents an opportunity to showcase these changes –the new fisheries, the innovations and the inspiring young people taking over the reins.

This project is well aligned with the FRDC’s Strategic R&D priorities, and aims to build community, trust, respect and value (FRDC R&D Plan 2020-2025: Outcome 5) by providing foundational information and support services (FRDC R&D Plan 2020-2025: Enabling Strategy V).

Objectives

1. Increase the awareness of innovation and sustainability in wild catch seafood producers and their link to ongoing local seafood supply.
2. Increase the socio-economic development in coastal fishing communities.
3. Improve social acceptability and perception of the people, products, and organisations who are part of the regions featured in the series.

Website

Website • 2025-01-22
Take a Deep Dive_FRDC

Summary

This project developed a suite of videos that showcased an unbiased and authentic perspective on what the commercial wild catch sector looks like from the fishers' perspective. Through a series of interviews, each video focuses on the themes of - career opportunities, sustainability within wild catch fishing, innovation across the sector and its socio-economic benefits.
 
The videos were used in a social media campaign "Take a deep dive into wild catch fishing" with further details on the campaign and the videos available on the FRDC website here: https://www.frdc.com.au/take-deep-dive-wildcatch-fishing
Adoption
PROJECT NUMBER • 2018-049
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

A Better Way to Fish: testing the feasibility of tunnel net ‘fish trap’ gear in North Queensland

This study found that tunnel nets are technically feasible in this location. In spite of the weather conditions, the fishing gear remained intact and successfully captured significant numbers of marketable fishes. Importantly, SOCI species were released alive and in excellent condition, as were...
ORGANISATION:
James Cook University (JCU)

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.