The WA rock lobster and finfish industries are in transition. Contraction of catches and consequent management changes have made long term economic sustainability an issue that now needs to be addressed within Integrated Fisheries Management (IFM).

Achieving this requires:

(1) An assessment of economic sustainability across all sectors in the supply chain. Decreasing volumes mean unit costs will likely rise. Rationalization will be required that reflects the optimal economic scale in catching, processing and marketing. Optimizing the supply chain processes requires a better understanding of demand and pricing in domestic and international markets, including estimates of future prices and mechanisms to encourage greater efficiencies and better pricing outcomes. An essential component of long term economic sustainability is the assessment of potential opportunities to "value add" and to increase prices received by producers through coordinated value adding and marketing activities.

(2) Industry governance, funding and management arrangements that encourage long term sustainability based on optimizing the whole of the fishery. There is a need to "audit" governance structures to determine consistency with achieving long term economic sustainability and identify opportunities to make improvements.

(3) Assembling the best available information for managers to make the application of IFM consistent with long term sustainability of all parts of the industry. The governance process (management regimes, data collection, funding, allocation) needs to be part of a long term pathway to economic sustainability.

These broad needs were indentified in discussions with Heather Brayford and Lindsay Joll at DoF. Auditing governance structures to determine an optimal structure for long term economic sustainability was recognized as the area where this project would interact positively with DoF work going on to design integrated governance and management practices across fisheries generally and these fisheries in particular. They have agreed that Dr Lindsay Joll could be nominated as a co-investigator.

Lack of knowledge of Western Australia’s fisheries oceanography fundamentally limits understanding of the recruitment of Western Rock Lobster, Panulirus cygnus, in a fishery worth $200-300 million/year to Australia. The life cycle of P. cygnus includes a planktonic “phyllosoma” larval stage that can be transported ~1500 km offshore, via ocean currents. Development then continues at sea for up to 11 months, before juveniles (“puerulus”) cross the shelf to recruit to coastal reef areas. Critical to improving management of this fishery is an understanding of oceanographic mechanisms driving coastal recruitment. The last three years of puerulus settlement have been low, with the latest (2008/09) the lowest in 40 years. This recent low settlement remains unexplained by environmental drivers previously identified as important, so its cause represents a key unknown for managers assessing the fishery’s sustainability. We will test the hypothesis that variation in settlement is driven by variation in food availability during the open-ocean stage of the phyllosoma larvae. We suggest that ocean productivity, particularly the nitrate-driven classic food chain supporting diatoms, and copepods, (as the ultimate prey of phyllosoma), limits phyllosoma growth and survival in their oceanic phase. Our work targets the peak autumn/winter plankton bloom in the Leeuwin Current, quantifying oceanographic parameters crucial to modelling rock lobster larval dynamics and attempting to link these directly to the food chain on which the phyllosoma as active predators, rely very heavily upon for survival.

The WRL Industry is currently moving from a decision-rule framework, based solely on breeding stock levels, to a more robust two-dimensional approach incorporating both breeding stock and harvest rate. This approach represents best practice fisheries management and is consistent with Commonwealth Fisheries Harvest Strategy Policy and was recently vetted during a review on stock assessment methodologies used in the WRL fishery. The review panel supported this new direction but highlighted the importance of having robust estimates of the indices on which this framework will be based, especially the sensitivity of the (empirical and model-derived) breeding stock indices and harvest rates to fishing efficiency. Due to speculation surrounding current estimates of efficiency creep, they further recommended exploring whether these indices could be determined using different techniques. Further development of these indices has now been incorporated in the current “Action Plan” to meet the requirements of the Marine Stewardship Council. Recent concern surrounding the current low levels of puerulus settlement, and their possible links to breeding stock levels, has heightened further the need for reliable estimates of harvest rate and efficiency creep.
Change-in-ratio and index removal techniques have been shown to produce robust estimates of these indices in other fisheries including the Southern Rock Lobster Fishery (Frusher et al., 1997). Although well developed for the SRL fishery, the success of these methods depend on the specific data sources available and may not be directly transferable to other fisheries. Consequently, the value of these techniques using data available in the WRL fishery needs to be thoroughly examined to determine if they could generate robust estimates that can be used in the management of this fishery. If they are considered robust they will provide valuable alternatives to the methods currently being used to monitor changes in fleet efficiency.

There is much information available regarding the benefits of automation. Much of this information is supplied by equipment manufacturers and is therefore less than objective. In addition many of these claims are not supported scientifically or commercially and most equipment suppliers are not sufficiently familiar with the Western Rocklobster industry to even make many of the claims. There is a strong need for independant seafood engineering and technical experts to be available (presumably within Universities, etc) that industry can call upon to verifiy equipment suppliers' claims and provide firsthand expert knowledge on the operation and limitations of any equipment under consideration. This project will investigate options for automation of western rock lobster processing from a position of commercial and industry knowledge and scientific expertise to produce definitive cost/benefit assessments. In addition, technical experts associated with the CRC, such as the UniSA Seafood Engineering Postdoc will be involved to strenthen the outcomes and help build capacity within research providers.