The SAFS assessments have provided assurance to seafood buyers regarding the stock status of many key Australian species and is a respected source of information used by the broader Australian community, including third party certification schemes,environmental NGOs, government, seafood retailers and food service companies.

However, the undefined status poses a problem for these stakeholders as they would like to buy many of these species but are constrained by how the interpretation of "undefined" may be viewed. The risk is that the stock may be overfished, underfished, it has no access to certification and there is no evidence base for the community to make an informed option.

There are also other stocks not included in the SAFS and falling under state jurisidictions which are also classified as undefined or unknown.

Given the variety of methods available, there is benefit of gaining agreement amongst scientists working in this area of methods to assess undefined stocks based on (a) the data and (b) the resources available. In some cases catch data may be available, but the resources required for catch only models may not be available. Also important is to increase focus on testing the performance of methods proposed for the assessment of data deficient fisheries (not a shortage of methods so much as a shortage of rigorous tests) . Gaining agreement on a risk based approach with agreed understanding on the interpretations of this approach would benefit SAFS users.

There are increasing community expectations about the social and environmental performance of fisheries and therefore the a growing need for accurate, timely, defensible information to defend the fishing industry, support good purchasing decisions by consumers, protect reputational integrity for the seafood businesses and growing. As these underlying concerns relate to industry-wide pre-competitive activities, collective investment and action focusing on provision of robust and credible information on sustainability and agreed assessment methodologies will reduce overall costs of fishery certification, internal species and fisheries assessments undertaken by seafood businesses and assessments required under the EBPC Act. SAFS is already considered a source of some of this information , but stakeholders require the inclusion of more species and fisheries , a reduction in the undefined species (as this status is difficult to communicate), habitat, TEPs, by-catch and expansion to include social and economic criteria.To reduce assessment costs there is also a need to develop a benchmark which recognises equivalence amongst third party certification and legislative assessment processes to reduce costs and avoid duplication. Progress has also been made on development and standardisation of approaches within all jurisdictions to ensure consistent language and approaches to defining sustainability and responsible fisheries management practices including data poor and inshore fisheries.

There is now a need to build on all this progress through effective and focused coordination and wherever possible, fast track developments by adapting existing international initiative such as the UKs Sustainable Seafood Coalition and the Responsible Fishing Vessel scheme to the Australian fisheries to achieve National Priority 1 objectives by 2020.

Linkages with National Priority 2 have to also be established to ensure that outcomes and outputs support the achievement of those goals i.e. demonstrate that increased productivity and profitability consistent with economic, social and environmental sustainability.