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Environment
Industry
Industry
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PROJECT NUMBER • 2020-056
PROJECT STATUS:
CURRENT

Evaluation of a smart-phone application to collect recreational fishing catch estimates, including an assessment against an independent probability based survey, using South Australia as a case study

Information on recreational catch and effort is becoming increasingly important to inform fishery stock assessment and the sustainable management of fisheries resources. As smartphone applications ('apps') become more sophisticated and widely available, they are increasingly being used to record...
ORGANISATION:
University of Adelaide

National Seafood Industry Leadership Program (NSILP) 2025-2026

Project number: 2024-041
Project Status:
Current
Budget expenditure: $1,183,200.00
Principal Investigator: Heidi J. Mumme
Organisation: Mi-Fish Consulting Pty Ltd
Project start/end date: 29 Jan 2025 - 14 Feb 2027
Contact:
FRDC

Need

FRDC is currently operating under the 2020-2025 Research and Development Plan. This plan details the areas of investment for the industry and provides direction regarding the leadership requirements for the Australia seafood industry.

FRDC states that "This is one of the FRDC’s most ‘people-centric’ plans to date, with a focus on capacity building, shaping culture, building relationships and establishing shared principles and values.” Importantly for the seafood industry and community, capacity building is high on the agenda.

The NSILP responds to four enabling strategies
‘Strengthen adoption for transformative change’ (through increasing and improving the uptake of knowledge, skills, solutions, technology and new ways of thinking to create positive change for industry).
‘Promote innovation and entrepreneurship’ (through encouraging new solutions, products and processes as well as new ways of thinking and doing).
‘Build capability and capacity’ (through helping people from across fishing and aquaculture to have the knowledge and skills needed to be safe, happy and productive, and to adapt and flourish in the face of change).
‘Provide foundational information and support services’ (through delivering information to guide the evolution of fishing and aquaculture in Australia).

The industry needs that have been identified are:

- Capacity building and leadership knowledge.
- Although online delivery evolved and improved during COVID, face-to-face remains the preferred method of NSILP learning/delivery to enable the opportunity to build in-person connections.
- Resourced and facilitated Alumni and industry networking and connections.

Objectives

1. Engage with and enable industry to build leadership awareness and capability - communicate NSILP cohorts/programs annually and Seafood Directions 2026 NSILP Alumni opportunities
2. Review and development of materials and resources
3. Deliver four NSILP face to face programs and 2026 SD NSILP Alumni events
4. Support participants before, during and after their learning experience and support industry engagement with the program and participants.
5. Enable new and robust networks across NSILP cohorts and Alumni into the wider industry
6. Review - establish success factors for leadership learning
7. Connect NSILP cohorts with the FRDC RD&E plan and expertise
8. Explore approaches to showcase NSILP Alumni pathways
Industry

Determination of the impacts of direct harvest of coral species in northern Australia

Project number: 2019-070
Project Status:
Current
Budget expenditure: $360,000.00
Principal Investigator: Michael Usher
Organisation: Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (NT)
Project start/end date: 31 May 2020 - 20 Aug 2023
Contact:
FRDC

Need

Australia’s aquarium fisheries are high value (GVP >$20 million), small scale fisheries that rely on exporting CITES listed corals for profitability and viability. The Australian government requires fisheries collecting and exporting these species to demonstrate that their harvest is sustainable under the Environment Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act 1999 (EPBC Act) in order to meet Australia's obligations under CITES.
In the absence of empirical evidence, precautionary harvest limits are set on all coral species, and monitored and reported by NT Fisheries to the Commonwealth Department of Environment and Energy (DoEE), to fulfil EPBC requirements. Increased global demand for valuable coral species presents an opportunity for licenced fishers to develop new and existing international markets. However, in order to increase harvest limits, evidence is required to reinforce that the harvest and subsequent export will not have a detrimental effect on the population status of the species (CITES non-detriment finding). Any supporting non-detriment finding must be corroborated with new empirical evidence on the impacts of harvesting corals.
The FRDC project ‘Establishing baselines and assessing vulnerability of commercially harvested corals across northern Australia’ (FRDC 2014-029) (currently underway) attempts to address some of these issues including taxonomy, abundance and distribution of key coral species but fails to address the long-standing concern of the impacts of coral harvesting. Understanding and quantifying the impacts of harvesting coral has the potential for providing the greatest benefit to industry. The specific need is to investigate the extent of recovery (or not) of key species of Scleractinian (hard) corals harvested at the level of individual colonies over an appropriate temporal scale.
Members of the A12 Aquarium display fishery are supportive of this project and will be actively involved in assisting with data collection. This project directly addresses the NT Research Advisory Committee priority ‘Impact of harvesting key species of Scleractinian (hard) corals in the Northern Territory’.

Objectives

1. Establish a monitoring program involving commercial fishers to determine the impacts of harvest on key coral species.
2. Improve the accuracy of coral species identification through the development of an NT identification guide.
3. Assess reproductive modes, and establish rates of recruitment for commercially important Northern Territory corals.

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