Throughout Australia’s coastal fisheries, there is a need to address external, often land-based threats to fishery sustainability. Such threats are often dismissed or poorly understood, so that management responses may be focused on restraining fishing effort instead of addressing external threats. A collaborative approach is needed, which brings together fishers, land users, catchment managers and fisheries managers to educate each other, share understanding of the system, and decide on management actions targeted to be both realistic and effective.

In Corner Inlet, the threat to fishery productivity caused by a decline in seagrass health and cover needs to be addressed. The causes for this decline appear complex. The West Gippsland CMA has initiated a Water Quality Improvement Plan to address nutrients and sediment runoff, but this project is needed to adequately counter these and other threats to the seagrass system. To properly target management actions and verify their effectiveness, the first-hand knowledge of fishers is needed to identify areas of seagrass loss and areas currently under threat. The effects of agricultural chemicals must be considered, and there is a need to convey the threats and their solutions to the land-users who can affect change in the catchment – the farmers. To sustain this process, methods that can provide early warning of threats by monitoring specific aspects of seagrass are needed.

This project will facilitate direct lines of communication and thus a collaborative approach by fishers, farmers, researchers, councils and catchment and fishery managers to understand the linkages, so as to implement ecosystem-based management. Further, it will provide a model as to how such collaborative approaches may be best carried out in other Australian coastal fisheries.

The project meets Victorian FRAB priority 2012 - Understanding linkages between primary productivity and fisheries to improve ecosystem based fisheries management.

Biofouling has emerged as the main bottleneck to production in the mussel farming industry. For example, since 2003, mussel production has declined by approximately 50% in Victoria. Concurrent with this decline has been the rise of several problematic biofouling species, including the invasive hydroid (Ectopleura crocea), the invasive sea star (Asterias amurensis), and several ascidian and algal species. Many of these biofouling taxa are common across Victorian, South Australian, Western Australian, Tasmanian and New South Wales mussel farms. Combined, these biofouling species are believed to have had a range of effects on production, including: 1) reducing natural mussel spat settlement rates; 2) preying upon mussel spat and juveniles; 3) competing for food with mussels; and 4) smothering established mussels.

A clear need exists to develop methods to avoid, prevent and treat biofouling to reduce costs and improve production. Typically, biofouling management accounts for 30-40% of production costs. Current biofouling removal methods (stripping of lines or fresh-water baths) are time consuming and labour-intensive. As a consequence, biofouling often develops to damaging levels before farmers are able to remove it.

Farmers require knowledge of the timing, location and depth of key fouling species so biofouling outbreaks can be avoided. Further, there is a need to test whether the type of equipment used (e.g., rope type and colour) or its arrangement (dropper spacing and dropper depth) may reduce biofouling. As some biofouling will inevitably develop on mussel lines, new biofouling treatments that are cheap, easy to use and effective must be tested. These include acetic acid, hot water baths, high pressure hot air and their combinations. Acetic acid has proved promising against many biofouling species in the New Zealand mussel industry, but has not been trialled on key biofouling species in southern Australian waters (e.g. hydroids).

There is abundant scientific evidence that micro-management of abalone fisheries is needed (see B2) and state management plans, R&D priorities, etc. (e.g. NSW FMP, Newman & Smith 2001, Victoria’s ENRIC 2002) and FRDC’s Needs Review (MacArthur Agribusness 1999) recognize this. State financial resources are - and under cost recovery in each state will remain - insufficient to support assessment and management of individual reef-stocks. This project proposes the alternative: to empower industry stakeholders with assessment tools and processes for collaboration to achieve management outcomes. Collaboration between industry and management agencies, and tools to monitor and evaluate the industry management process are also needed. This project also addresses national R&D priorities for people development to create an innovative industry culture and for “collective industry strategic thinking and cohesion” (Needs Review)

Empowerment of industry will also address the strategic priority for more participatory co-management of the resource (e.g. SA 2002-7 R&D plan) and inclusive ownership of management decisions. Industry participation is a priority in most states (e.g. Newman & Smith 2001). Industry associations have committed to addressing reef-stock management (see B2), but we must underpin industry initiatives with the required biological information, modeling and collaboration tools, so reef-scale assessment and management processes can be accepted by state and federal management agencies as a secure basis for sustainable management, in accordance with the provisions of the EPBC Act 1999. FRDC’s Needs Review identified the “lack of spatial methodologies and modeling tools” as a substantial risk to the industry. We can build on extensive previous research (see B2) to progressively understand and model the relationship between fishing and reef-stock production. This will encourage future integration of state zonal management processes with the industry reef-scale process.

This addresses FRDC Program 1, Strategies 1, 6, 7, 9; Program 3, Strategies 1, 2; and the FRDC concern for “end-user” involvement.