26 results
Adoption
PROJECT NUMBER • 2017-049
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Monitoring abalone juvenile abundance following removal of Centrostephanus and translocation

A new system of Abalone recruitment modules (ARMs) have proven to be successful in collecting juvenile abalone in Tasmanian waters. This design was subsequently transferred to the Eastern Zone, Victoria, where IMAS staff and Eastern Zone Abalone Industry Association (EZIZA) members installed ARMs at...
ORGANISATION:
University of Tasmania (UTAS)
Industry
PROJECT NUMBER • 2016-213
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Building economics into fisheries management decision making - to utilise a suite of SA case studies

The aim of this project was to develop a set of economic analysis guidelines for use at an individual fishery level to aid harvest strategy and other fisheries management decisions. The project sought to demonstrate how economics can be incorporated in fisheries management frameworks in lower value...
ORGANISATION:
Econsearch Pty Ltd

Testing abalone empirical harvest strategies, for setting TACs and associated LMLs, that include the use of novel spatially explicit performance measures

Project number: 2013-200
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $185,630.40
Principal Investigator: Malcolm Haddon
Organisation: CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere Hobart
Project start/end date: 1 Sep 2013 - 31 Aug 2015
Contact:
FRDC

Need

Recent declines in Eastern Tasmania (Tarbath & Gardner, 2012) and Tiparra Reef in South Australia (Chick & Mayfield, 2012) suggest a potential for changes in productivity. Further challenges to successfully managing abalone include periods of poor recruitment in some areas, rising Australian east coast temperatures, the Victorian virus outbreak, toxic blooms in Tasmania, and mortality events in Tasmania.

All these challenges to current management indicate the need for more detailed and rapidly reactive and defensible management of Australian abalone stocks.

The management strategy evaluation (MSE) framework from FRDC 2007/020 “Biological Performance Indicators for abalone fisheries”, focussed on the utility of classical performance measures. However, the Multi-Criterion-Decision-Analysis Harvest Strategy (MCDA-HS) being developed in Tasmania will integrate classic fishery Performance Measures (PMs) with new Spatial PMs, and include local complexity in growth (the latter are important for the TAC/LML debate). Now GPS data loggers have become compulsory within the Tasmanian fishery (2006/029 – “Using GPS technology to improve fishery-dependent data collection in abalone fisheries”), the need to test these new empirical harvest strategies, that include spatial PMs, is becoming urgent. The MSE framework, therefore needs modification to successfully simulate the new spatial performance measures and then test the performance of the novel harvest strategies. South Australia introduced a non-spatial MCDA-HS without testing and an array of unintended consequences is becoming apparent. To retain confidence in the application of formal harvest strategies with associated decision rules testing the harvest strategies as they are developed remains important.

Novel harvest Strategies need to be tested to determine by how much they improve the setting of TACs and associated LMLs. There is a recognized need to interact with FRDC 2011/201: “Implementing a spatial assessment and decision process to improve fishery management outcomes using geo-referenced diver data” so both projects can benefit from each other.

Objectives

1. Review objectives and logic of having and setting Legal Minimum Lengths in abalone fisheries and how these interact with TAC levels.
2. Conduct Manager/Industry workshops to inform, identify issues, and to select LML/TAC scenarios within particular harvest strategies for testing by Management Strategy Evaluation..
3. Develop new modules for the present Abalone MSE Framework for testing LML/TAC harvest strategies containing multiple empirical performance measures (MCDA) that use spatially explicit PMs.
4. Use the modified MSE framework to test new Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis Abalone Harvest Strategy under development in FRDC 2011/201.

Final report

ISBN: 978-1-4863-0731-9
Author: Malcolm Haddon and Craig Mundy
Final Report • 2017-10-01 • 3.78 MB
2013-200-DLD.pdf

Summary

The management of abalone stocks is difficult for many reasons including their high value and the exceptional levels of spatial structuring found in their stocks. In Tasmania, for example, suggestions to change such things as a legal minimum length or introduce a formal harvest strategy to replace the current relatively informal process, always engender high levels of sometimes heated debate. An aim of this work, conducted by Malcolm Haddon and Craig Mundy of CSIRO and the University of Tasmania respectively, was to formally examine the implications of changing legal minimum lengths and the importance of such LML to the management of abalone. This was in the context of using management strategy evaluation to test alternative potential harvest strategies for use, in the first place, within the Tasmanian abalone fisheries. With the advent and growth of more public scrutiny of wild fisheries a need for a more defensible, repeatable, and publically available process for setting abalone TACs had become urgent. This project aimed to contribute to the development of such formal harvest strategies that would both successfully generate workable management advice and be defensible under anyone’s scrutiny.

People
PROJECT NUMBER • 2009-712
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Seafood CRC: future harvest theme leadership

The CRC has developed the Future Harvest theme business plan to deliver the following outcomes: Fisheries management delivering maximum benefit from the resource while maintaining stocks above sustainability indicators Novel management strategies in place which increase economic yield from...
ORGANISATION:
University of Tasmania (UTAS)
Industry
PROJECT NUMBER • 2012-236
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Tactical Research Fund: developing the decision process for setting the TAC for abalone in Victoria, particularly with reference to recovery of AVG-impacted reefs

Management Strategy Evaluation (MSE) methods are used to examine the performance of prospective Harvest Control Rules for calculating the Total Allowable Catch (TAC) for the Western Zone (WZ) Abalone Fishery. Of particular importance is recovery of the stock following the combined effects of...
ORGANISATION:
Western Abalone Divers Association (WADA)
Environment
PROJECT NUMBER • 2016-009
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Aquatic Animal Health and Biosecurity Subprogram: Perkinsus olseni in abalone - development of fit-for-purpose tools to support its management

The project was able to successfully propagate a new P. olseni isolate from Queensland and successfully cultured the isolates from Spain, Japan, New Zealand, and South Australia as well as P. chesapeaki, which was used as a negative control. We were unable to culture the Western Australian (WA)...
ORGANISATION:
Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) WA

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

Project number: 2014-010
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $141,656.60
Principal Investigator: Craig Mundy
Organisation: University of Tasmania (UTAS)
Project start/end date: 9 Aug 2014 - 31 Jan 2017
Contact:
FRDC

Need

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.

Objectives

1. Optimise collector module design for quantifying abundance of juvenile abalone across a range of habitat types
2. Determine links between juvenile abundance observed on modules and abalone in surrounding habitat
3. Estimate expected juvenile abundance on collectors in a ‘normal’ recruitment year using published natural mortality data and known abundance.

Final report

ISBN: 978-1-925646-32-0
Authors: Craig Mundy Sarah Pyke Jaime McAllister Hugh Jones
Final Report • 2018-06-25 • 2.80 MB
2014-010-DLD.pdf

Summary

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 juvenile year-class strength would provide valuable prior warning of decline. Artificial structures referred to as "Abalone Recruitment Modules" were trialled to monitor changes in the abundance of Blacklip Abalone to meet the conditions of the Eastern Zone Abalone Fishery in Tasmania. This requires testing designs in different habitats and improvements to the method of deployment on reef substrates. Work was also required to establish a network of these that is effective in terms of statistical power and operational feasibility.
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