Ministerial recommendations following Strategic Assessment of the SESSF Trawl Fishery were that:

18. AFMA, in consultation with industry, EA, researchers and other stakeholders, to further assess and reduce the extent of interactions of seals, cetaceans and seabirds across all sectors of the SESSF, and interactions with syngnathids in the trawl sectors and white sharks in the gillnet and hook sector. AFMA will, for all of the above species:
• within 12 months, establish robust data collection and reporting systems to quantify the extent of interactions; and
• within 3 years assess, trial and implement as appropriate mitigation or avoidance measures including further trials of bycatch exclusion devices and spatial or temporal closures.

For seals and sea lions, AFMA will, within 18 months, extend across the trawl sectors management measures assessed as effective to help reduce interactions with seals and sea lions.

By the time you are considering whether to fund this project, the December 2004 deadline for establishment of the robust data collection and reporting system will have passed.

ISMP observer trips only cover 5% of trawl shots, so there is a lot of uncertainty about relatively rare events such as the interactions of trawl vessels with seals. Power analysis of the ISMP data revealed that to detect even a 50% decrease in the interactions with seals would require an observer program more than 7 times the current level of coverage. This would be likely to cost industry over $4 million dollars annually. If even half of industry accurately recorded their interactions with seals, it would provide a level of monitoring of this issue that would be ten times more powerful than the current ISMP coverage at a cost of 2% of independent observer coverage.

Industry can not afford to do anything other than immediately establish its own program to monitor the interactions of trawl vessels with seals. The current ISMP will be used to audit the industry-based monitoring program.