As outlined in the consultation section there is qualitative evidence of support for such a project and there has been an indication that Industry would relish the opportunity to develop their R&D ideas into projects. This would empower their members and associations to conduct relevant R&D and champion the need to take more responsibility for R&D directions.

This project seeks to achieve outcomes identified in all the programs in the FRDC 2005-10 R&D Plan. In addition, all proposals will need to link in with existing industry specific R&D plans so it will allow stakeholders to develop research projects that will assist in achieving the outcomes identified in relevant stakeholder R&D plans

Currently some industries and individuals are paying hundreds of thousands dollars for R&D. They are often unaware, or do not have the knowledge to use their financial and human resources to value add to their research dollars by leveraging further assistance. This project will provide a means for this to occur, leading to improved projects and more wide ranging outcomes.

There is a general lack of expertise amongst stakeholders including commercial, recreational associations and indigenous groups to develop their own R&D projects. As such they often merely tag onto research agencies’ projects which may not really provide desired stakeholder outcomes.

A significant proportion of R&D funding is directed towards agency overheads and oncosts, as well as directly towards projects. It is envisaged that proposals that are developed under this project will seek to minimise oncosts apportioned towards such externally funded projects.

The process used in this project will allow stakeholders to develop a range of skills so as to be able to participate in research programs that focus on good management, maximising economic, environmental and social benefits for the whole community through stakeholder specific research.

The dynamics of fish stocks are significantly influenced by environmental and oceanographic factors. Although this is now recognised by industry and scientists alike, there is increasing frustration with the application of single species stock assessments or CPUE analyses that do not incorporate any information about the broader environmental/oceanographic factors. There are clear examples in the SESSF of cyclic patterns in recruitment and availability and indications of regime shifts, but there has been little support for compiling these data and incorporating them in a quantitative manner into stock assessments of fisheries in SE Australia. Much of this information about the influence of environmental factors is in the heads of experienced fishermen but needs to be formally (and quantitatively) incorporated into the assessments/analyses that underpin the TAC setting process for the fishery. Clearly, a better understanding of the influences of the environment will improve several aspects of the assessment and management processes. Including environmental factors in the standardization of catch rates has the potential to remove a significant source of uncertainty that can lead to misleading population estimates. There is also a need to include environmental factors directly into the assessment, for example through models of environmentally-driven cycles (eg blue grenadier). As outputs from the assessments flow directly into management decisions, for example through the TAC setting process and appropriately chosen harvest strategies, the project will enhance management’s confidence in the decisions being made, and also improve industry’s faith in the assessment/management process. Industry members are currently getting disillusioned with assessments that do not take environmental factors of fishery dynamics into account to the point where they are beginning to walk out on the fishery assessment process. This only further decreases the relevance and applicability of these assessments. This trend can be turned around if industry is listened to and empowered with the capability of bringing quantitative information into the stock assessment process (rather than anecdotal).

From information passed down through generations and decades of their own experiences, good fishermen have an informed understanding of the influence of environmental and oceanographic on fish stocks. Industry and scientists would both appreciate the means to incorporate environmental/oceanographic data into the stock assessment process in a formal manner. Subsequent benefits to the management process will ensue through the provision of better developed harvest strategies that can explicitly account for environmental fluctuations in key fishery parameters (eg projections of cyclic patterns in availability and recruitment), and an exploration of flexible multi-year TACs. Also, short-term predictions of environmentally driven changes in biomass (either increases or decreases), that have led to unnecessary changes to TACs, may be offset by an increased ability to forecast biomass changes and thereby enable management to respond in a manner that does not unduly impact the stock or the financial stability of the industry. This project provides the datasets and models that would enable this to occur.

Most importantly, this project is the first step in the process of getting fishers to collect the information that is so needed to manage the fish stocks. With the burden of increasing costs of fishery monitoring, data collection and analysis, the fishing industry is looking towards cost effective alternatives to this work always being undertaken by government agencies. Industry members are already purchasing software that will enable them to collect and analyse much of this information themselves. There is a need for this to be a coordinated process which will ultimately empower the industry to bring valuable interpretations and analysis into the stock assessment process in a quantitative manner. Using the resources from this project to begin with, we aim to assess whether industry can be self-sufficient in collecting these data by the end of this three year project.