33 results

Sea Change: co-developing pathways to mitigate and adapt to a changing climate for fisheries and aquaculture in Australia

Project number: 2023-011
Project Status:
Current
Budget expenditure: $1,628,586.00
Principal Investigator: Gretta T. Pecl
Organisation: University of Tasmania (UTAS)
Project start/end date: 31 Oct 2023 - 30 Apr 2027
Contact:
FRDC
TAGS
Climate Resilience
Climate Mitigation
Climate Change
Adaptation

Need

There is a need to increase effective engagement between fishing and aquaculture stakeholders and climate science and scientists in an ongoing strategic way, and not ‘just’ for single-project outcomes.

Improved engagement will help increase understanding of the likely implications of a changing climate in relevant contexts, and lay foundations for a shared exploration of available options for reducing risk exposure. We have worked with stakeholders and the FRDC Extension Officer Network to design a strategy that will engage fishing and aquaculture stakeholders on existing knowledge regarding risks and opportunities associated with a changing climate, to enable resource managers and researchers to better understand the ways in which many sectors are already adapting autonomously and to identify the barriers to further adaptation, and to co-design solutions that are relevant at local- and industry-levels to help build climate-ready communities and to stimulate economic resilience.

In many cases (but not all), extensive information regarding marine climate change - including key risks to fisheries and aquaculture producers (at a high level) - is already available, along with information on how to develop adaptation plans. However, despite this, progress and uptake within most sectors in terms of planned adaptation responses has been very slow – although many individual operators are already making ‘autonomous’ changes to their day-to-day operations in response to climate change drivers. If these changes are being made without access to best available knowledge, then it is very likely that substantial portions of these responses are maladaptive in the longer term, or may be countervailing to planned government adaptations (see Pecl et al 2019, Ambio, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13280-019-01186-x). This is a pattern evident within many different industries around Australia and across the rest of the world. ‘What’ needs to happen has thus been outlined in general terms in many cases, but such information is not co-developed or provided in consultation with end-users in ways that resonate or are useful to them. This project will address this need for relevance and usefulness.

The project aims to develop reflexive, ongoing, and two-way knowledge exchange between industry representatives, operators and manager, and the marine climate change impacts and adaptation research sector, so that solutions are co-designed, usable, and adoptable.

Objectives

1. Work with seafood industry leaders to establish two-way climate conversations that can strengthen and underpin Australian fishing and aquaculture’s resilience to a changing climate. This approach will facilitate co-design of pathways to increase agility and build capacity for climate change adaptation with a select number of fisheries and aquaculture operations. This process will also create a model that can be applicable to other RDC’s.
2. Create a climate conversations platform to facilitate knowledge exchange (including identifying ‘gaps’ and shared issues), and thus capture, disseminate, and showcase:a. How fishing and aquaculture sectors are already adapting and responding to recent changesb. What has facilitated these changes made, and what the barriers are to further adaptationc. The story of fishing and aquaculture’s efforts towards achieving climate resilience - using a dynamic ‘story map’ approach, and other multi-media, communicate progress to target audiences.
3. Identify a) key factors influencing the agility of fisheries and aquaculture to adapt to climate change, and b) which factors (e.g. opportunities) are most important for adaptation capacity-building for different types of operations - building on work underway across multiple domestic and international projects and working groups.
4. Co-develop pathways, with a select number of fisheries and aquaculture operations, to increase their agility and build sector capacity for climate change adaptation and resilience.
5. Support the development of communities of practice for groups of fisheries and/or aquaculture operations that have similar opportunities and pathways – to support increased agility and capacity building for climate change adaptation (determined in objective 3).
Industry

FRDC-DCCEE: a climate change adaptation blueprint for coastal regional communities

Project number: 2010-542
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $663,596.18
Principal Investigator: Stewart Frusher
Organisation: University of Tasmania (UTAS)
Project start/end date: 30 Jun 2011 - 29 Jun 2013
Contact:
FRDC
TAGS
Stakeholder
Resource Access And Allocation
Ecosystem
Community
Climate Change

Need

Meeting the challenge of preparing and adapting for climate change is arguably the most important task confronting the management of our national marine resources. Climate change is expected to result in significant impacts for marine ecosystems with flow on social and economic implications for resource users and communities. Importantly, coastal rural communities have greater dependency on marine industries that provide social and economic benefits through fishing, aquaculture and tourism (e.g. recreational fishing and diving). The success of adaptation decisions in terms of meeting objectives, capturing opportunities and overcoming barriers, being cost effective and minimising negative flow on effects will be influenced by the level of understanding of the needs, priorities, perceptions and attitudes of stakeholders including knowledge of the social and economic consequences of adaptation options. Without such information, our ability to make timely and effective adaptation decisions will be limited. Developing the tools that provide the relevant information to reduce risks and increase capacity to cope with, and benefit from, change is urgently needed for these coastal communities. These tools need to cross discipline boundaries and provide linkages between the vulnerabilities of the biological system with the adaptive capacity and vulnerabilities of the human system.
To meet this need, this project brings together leading marine multi-disciplinary researchers with proven expertise in inter-disciplinary, participatory research approaches to engage stakeholders in the process of developing a suite of strategically targeted marine adaptation tools that will represent a blueprint for marine stakeholders nationally. The blueprint will facilitate these tools being readily adopted by different marine communities, industries and individuals enabling them to make informed decisions based on a range of climate change adaptation options designed to minimise impacts and maximise opportunities. The project focuses on NARP themes 2 and 4, and addresses areas 2 and 3 of the regional programs.

Objectives

1. Develop and trial a "blueprint" using three marine community case studies in southeastern, western and northern Australia, that objectively integrates a suite of adaptation assessment and evaluation tools for the provision of best choice marine climate change adaptation options to these coastal communities.
2. Compare and synthesise potential adaptation options across case studies to develop a) an understanding of the context dependence of adaptation in marine communities, and b) a portfolio of generic adaptation options for sub-tropical to temperate coastal and regional marine communities in Australia.
3. Based on the outcomes of 1 and 2, determine the broad representativeness of the blueprint to address the needs and priorities of coastal rural communities throughout Australia.
4. Develop capacity for inter-disciplinary research by training and mentoring two early career researchers.

Final report

ISBN: 978-1-86295-733-6
Final Report • 2013-11-01 • 7.84 MB
2010-542-DLD.pdf
Environment
Environment
PROJECT NUMBER • 2011-039
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

FRDC-DCCEE: preparing fisheries for climate change: identifying adaptation options for four key fisheries in South Eastern Australia

Over the next century, the marine ecosystems of south-eastern Australia are expected to exhibit some of the largest climate-driven changes in the Southern Hemisphere. The effects of these changes on communities and businesses will depend, in part, on how well fishing industries and resource managers...
ORGANISATION:
University of Tasmania (UTAS)
TAGS
Population Dynamics
Harvest Strategy
Ecosystem
Distribution
Climate Change
SPECIES
Snapper
Blue Grenadier
Southern Rock Lobster
Blacklip Abalone
Greenlip Abalone
Environment
Environment
Industry
PROJECT NUMBER • 2014-010
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Understanding recruitment collapse of juvenile abalone in the Eastern Zone Abalone fishery – development of pre-recruitment monitoring, simulation of recruitment variation and predicting the impact of climate variation

Over the past three decades the Tasmanian Eastern Zone Abalone Fishery has experienced several fluctuations in catch and catch rates of Blacklip Abalone as well as environmental perturbations, which may be affecting productivity. The capacity to measure inter-annual variation in Blacklip Abalone...
ORGANISATION:
University of Tasmania (UTAS)
TAGS
Survey
Stock Assessment
Rac Tas
Mortality
Migration
SPECIES
Blacklip Abalone
Environment
PROJECT NUMBER • 2005-029
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Seafood CRC: Factors limiting resilience and recovery of fished abalone populations

The aims of this project were to: Determine the efficacy of translocation of mature abalone for stock rebuilding Identify key ecological processes that limit stock recovery Quantify the scale of 'spillover' from translocated populations Cost-benefit analysis of rehabilitated...
ORGANISATION:
University of Tasmania (UTAS)
TAGS
Stock Assessment
Social Science
Social Science
Restocking
Reproduction
SPECIES
Blacklip Abalone
Environment
PROJECT NUMBER • 2007-045
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Rebuilding Ecosystem Resilience: assessment of management options to minimise formation of ‘barrens’ habitat by the long-spined sea urchin (Centrostephanus rodgersii) in Tasmania

By overgrazing seaweeds and sessile invertebrates, essentially back to bare rock, the advent of the long‐spined sea urchin Centrostephanus rodgersii in eastern Tasmanian waters poses a significant threat to the integrity, productivity and biodiversity of shallow (<40 m) rocky reef systems and the...
ORGANISATION:
University of Tasmania (UTAS)
TAGS
Invasive Species
Habitat
SPECIES
Southern Rock Lobster
Blacklip Abalone
Sea Urchins
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