21 results
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PROJECT NUMBER • 2018-070
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Opportunities and impacts of range extending scalefish species: understanding population dynamics, ecosystem impacts and management needs

This work set out to quantify the biology and diet of three key range-shifting species in Tasmania with both recreational and commercial fishery value. The project was heavily reliant on engagement from the recreational fishing community and multiple citizen science initiatives, as well as...
ORGANISATION:
University of Tasmania

A South Australian gulfs and coastal ecosystem model to optimise multi-species fisheries management in a changing environment

Project number: 2018-011
Project Status:
Current
Budget expenditure: $218,932.00
Principal Investigator: Simon D. Goldsworthy
Organisation: University of Adelaide
Project start/end date: 3 Jun 2019 - 17 Dec 2020
Contact:
FRDC

Need

The SA State Government has made a commitment to reform the Marine Scalefish Fishery (MSF) that aims to provide long-term sustainability of key stocks for both recreational and commercial fisheries, and unlock the industries economic potential. The key reforms include a voluntary buy-back scheme targeting the removal of at least 30% of commercial licences and the introduction of new zoning and quota management regulations. The timeframe for the reforms will be determined in consultation with the industry. Details on the implementation strategy have yet to be developed, but will need to be underpinned by extensive stakeholder consultation and backed by research that provides confidence that among the approaches considered, those chosen will best deliver the intent of the reforms.

This project aims to develop an SA Gulfs and Coastal ecosystem model to provide a Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) tool to assess and optimise a range of reform scenarios. The project will link in closely with FRDC 2017/014 (Informing structural reform in the MSF), utilising many of its key outputs, including time series of spatial distribution of catch and effort, social-economic performance, and reform implementation scenarios. This project also will extend the investigation by integrating environmental time-series data to evaluate changes in productivity over time, identified as a potential factor in declining fisheries catches in the GSV ecosystem (FRDC 2013/031). Identifying the causes of productivity loss and its impact on fish production are important to resolve, especially in the context of the MSF reforms. Ultimately, the project aims to provide decision support tools to assess and evaluate the performance of diverse fisheries management strategies, and how these may perform under varying production regimes. Such an approach will provide a platform to evaluate and optimise the effectiveness of management strategies, and help ensure the fishery reforms achieve their key objectives.

Objectives

1. Develop an SA Gulfs and Coastal Ecosystem model to provide a MSE tool to inform and optimise multi-regional management, quotas for multi-species fisheries and multi-sector harvest strategies
2. Use the model to run scenarios to assess, evaluate and optimise Marine Scalefish Fishery reform options
3. Assess potential production loss issues, and evaluate how different MSF reform options may perform under different future production scenarios
Environment
PROJECT NUMBER • 2015-024
PROJECT STATUS:
CURRENT

Managing ecosystem interactions across differing environments: building flexibility and risk assurance into environmental management strategies

Summary The overarching aim of this research was to provide an improved understanding of the environmental interactions of Atlantic Salmon farming and to provide recommendations to both government and industry on monitoring and management strategies that are appropriate to the level of risk...
ORGANISATION:
University of Tasmania (UTAS)

Capability and Capacity: Navigating leadership pathways in fishing and aquaculture

Project number: 2023-132
Project Status:
Current
Budget expenditure: $87,000.00
Principal Investigator: Nicole McDonald
Organisation: CQUniversity (CQU) Rockhampton
Project start/end date: 29 May 2024 - 31 Jul 2025
Contact:
FRDC

Need

In a 2019 review of FRDC’s investment in people development, it was noted that significant variability exists across the industry in terms of leadership capability and capacity with most of FRDC investment focused on mid to higher levels of leadership (Lovett). While this past review is comprehensive, it is now 5 years old and pre-dates the ‘black swan’ event of COVID-19 that saw widespread disruptions to the economy, supply chains, and workforce, and has had consequences for leadership capacity and capability needs.

This project will review the current leadership development ecosystem, mapping relevant leadership programs, and identify potential opportunities for a diverse range of industry participants who will benefit from developing leadership capability and skills. Furthermore, acknowledging that leadership capability is not necessarily tied to formal positions of leadership, this project aims to identify different entry points for individual leadership development to ensure accessibility of opportunities. Any potential gaps in accessibility and potential new pathways will be identified. It is imperative that a lack of knowledge of learning and training opportunities to develop non-technical skills or low confidence levels to engage due to unclear entry pathways is not a barrier to any willing participant seeking to enhance their strengths and pursue an interest in making greater contributions that align with industry leadership capacity needs.

Our project combines a review of modern leadership definitions, theories, frameworks and practices, and through stakeholder engagement seeks to identify how these meet the context specific leadership challenges for the wild catch and aquaculture industries. Qualitative and quantitative research will be used to map and evaluate the current leadership development ecosystem for the wild catch and aquaculture sectors, identifying current pathways, recruitment processes, target outcomes, and the value and variety of alumni. Gaps in leadership capacity and capability will be identified and areas for potential changes investigated. Recommendations for improving return on investment in the existing leadership ecosystem will be made, including continuing development or improved integration of post program leaders into the industry. The current project has been designed to provide the breadth and depth of information that leads to practical implications for further industry engagement in leadership capacity and capability development.

Objectives

1. Provide a detailed understanding of the leadership capacity and capability competencies, and development opportunities within fishing and aquaculture
2. Develop a fisheries and aquaculture leadership ecosystem map, including entry points to a variety of programs for individuals to chart leadership development pathways
3. Identify gaps in leadership capacity and capability development activities and potential programs/resources to address these
4. Explore and identify across fisheries and aquaculture how leadership capability relates to roles, organisations and sectors

National Fish Habitat and Climate Response Partnership

Project number: 2023-021
Project Status:
Current
Budget expenditure: $360,000.00
Principal Investigator: Craig Copeland
Organisation: OzFish Unlimited
Project start/end date: 31 Mar 2024 - 1 Mar 2026
Contact:
FRDC

Need

In Australia, up to 90% of critical fish habitat for coastal fisheries, including seagrass, giant kelp, saltmarsh, and shellfish reefs, has been lost or significantly degraded. Many research studies have linked habitat with fisheries productivity, with habitat loss particularly impacting juvenile nurseries. Yet despite this information fish habitat restoration is not a recognised management tool in fisheries/harvest management strategies. Given this situation there is a strong need for a cohesive partnership across all fisheries sectors to support repairing productivity through fish habitat restoration and to create a forum where key sectors concerned for or dependent on aquatic habitat condition, can discuss problems and opportunities. This project will address a number of barriers limiting the restoration of fish habitat around Australia; accessibility of data relating fisheries production to habitat condition, limited penetration of this information into management and building a forum for the key fishing sectors to consider this information and develop responses.

Objectives

1. Create a collaborative space for key stakeholders in which to understand, interpret, compile and communicate knowledge resources required to support and inform the future habitat and climate resilience challenges facing fisheries and environment agencies and decision makers
2. Use the partnership to
a. Measure the status of waterways in relation to fisheries productivityb. Communicate within and between sectors the implications of the resulting status information.c. Develop waterway ecosystem protection and restoration targets.d. Contribute to environmental and fisheries policy development utilising the partnership to codesign policies to include principles and actions to address the need for waterway ecosystem protection and restoration as well as affect Future of the Industry report and various stock assessments.
Environment
PROJECT NUMBER • 2021-114
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Water abstraction impacts on flow dependent fisheries species of the Northern Territory, Australia - a synthesis of current knowledge and future research needs

This project synthesised information that could be used to help guide decision making around the protection of fisheries species that may be impacted by water abstraction. This review was led by Griffith University and conducted in collaboration with the University of Western...
ORGANISATION:
Griffith University Nathan Campus

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 • 2021-083
PROJECT STATUS:
CURRENT

Developing the tools and articulating the value proposition for genomic selection in Pacific Oyster selective breeding

To understand the opportunities and value in carbon neutral certification for the Australian oyster industry, FRDC and Oysters Australia commissioned NineSquared Pty Ltd to outline the current policy climate, pathways to certification and knowledge gaps limiting opportunity...
ORGANISATION:
Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) Hobart
Environment
PROJECT NUMBER • 2014-028
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Mud cockle (Katelysia spp.) stock enhancement/restoration: practical implementation and policy evaluation

This study was conducted to restore the Mud Cockle population in the Section Bank of Port River, South Australia, which had drastically decreased due to commercial fishing. Mud Cockles are important not only for commercial purposes but also for stabilizing sediment and reducing turbidity in the...
ORGANISATION:
SARDI Food Safety and Innovation
SPECIES