Aboriginal wild catch is aspirational, seasonal and culture-dependent. For these reasons, it does not compete well against large-scale, industrial fishing operations. Addressing the FRDC’s Indigenous Sector strategy to improve understanding and engagement that ‘best support individual and community economic development’ (FRDC 2015), this project aims to develop a niche market of boutique seafoods, together with investigating how the arts and tourism sectors can foster fisheries management for greater Indigenous community benefit.

A Tasmanian Aboriginal engagement framework in fisheries has not yet been developed by government (Lee 2016, in press). This project will create the conditions for extensions development, based upon resetting engagement terms between Indigenous peoples and government, providing a toolkit of self-determining strategies for regional development. Economic models for future development of fisheries can build upon the capacity of Indigenous communities to translate value into benefit in subsequent projects, such as employment opportunities within the network chain of wild catch procurement to presentation.

There is a need to provide best practice guidance that demonstrates Australia’s commitment to international obligations, such as 2007’s UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. In Australia, building on the growing jurisprudence that affirms native title rights to land, the High Court in 2013 extended such rights to commercial fishing in the Torres Strait in its Akiba v Commonwealth decision (Butterly 2013). However, judicial recognition of Indigenous fishing or other marine-based rights does not in itself provide specific guidance on how those environmental resources should be managed culturally and economically.

Large fluctuations between years in fishable biomass of abalone are thought to be driven by inter-annual variation in recruitment to the fishery. Over the last decade the changes in recruitment from year to year appear to have been especially extreme which suggests that this may be caused by climate change. Eastern Tasmania is one of the fastest warming parts of Australia as a result of greater extension of the EAC. This possible link between climate change and abalone recruitment can't be investigated in detail at present because of the lack of data / time series on abalone recruitment. This project will establish collection of that data to provide future capability.

When recruitment to the fishery fails, the fishery is reliant on existing older year-classes already in the fishery, leading to a rapid decrease in fishable biomass. The capacity to measure inter-annual variation in sub-legal year-class strength would provide valuable prior warning of decline. Data obtained from a pre-recruit monitoring program will provide fishery-independent data to inform TAC setting. Fishery independent pre-recruit abundance data is a valuable input to the Management Strategy evaluation (MSE) Harvest Strategy and Control Rule system being developed in Tasmania. Application of assessment and MSE (Management Strategy Evaluation) models are both limited due to the absence of data on early year class abundance patterns, and will be improved by access to pre-recruit data.