PROJECT NUMBER
•
2010-744
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED
ORGANISATION:
Food by Design
48 results
Seafood CRC: Australian Council of Prawn Fishers R&D Forum
Project number:
2010-711
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure:
$5,943.07
Principal Investigator:
James Fogarty
Organisation:
Shearwater Consulting Pty Ltd
Project start/end date:
14 Feb 2010
-
27 Mar 2010
Contact:
FRDC
TAGS
The Directors of the Australian Council of Prawn Fishers have set the Forum dates to comply with the agreements made at the March 2009 meeting.
1. Receive an update on the current status of the research that has been undertaken or committed to date
2. Identify any new areas for the undertaking of research, given the changes that may have occyrred in the past 12 months
3. Provide direction and priorities to the new Board of Directors on projects for 2010 and onward funding
4. Allocate an indicative budget to each of these broad project areas
PROJECT NUMBER
•
2009-774
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED
Seafood CRC: harvest strategy evaluations and co-management for the Moreton Bay trawl fishery
The Moreton Bay otter trawl fishery is a multispecies fishery, with the majority of the catch composed of various species of prawns, squid and Moreton Bay Bugs. The project was an initiative of the MBSIA and developed from concerns over a number of issues. These included concern over declining...
ORGANISATION:
Department of Primary Industries (QLD)
Seafood CRC: Develop priority R&D projects for the Australian Council of Prawn Fisheries
Project number:
2009-731
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure:
$21,655.00
Principal Investigator:
James Fogarty
Organisation:
Shearwater Consulting Pty Ltd
Project start/end date:
30 Jun 2009
-
15 Oct 2009
Contact:
FRDC
The workshop identified and agreed that the following were high priorities to address:
1. Consumer needs and Supply Chain Implementation. This would include National supply chain analysis,CRC Communal projects, evaluation of previous market development strategies, and the Retail Revolution suite of projects.
2.Quality Assurance programs. This would include a wild catch standard, black spot management and further negotiation on cadmium levels with the EU.
3. Industry Communication. This would continue retailer training and industry feedback. It would also identify potential students for masters or Phd studies and other CRC programs such as the entrepreneurship program.
4. Product and Process innovation: Develop a process to enable ACPF members to get matching investment (cash) for innovation projects.
1. To have at least 3 high priority projects for ACPF contracted by 31 October 2009
2. To establish the R&D planning and priority setting capability within the ACPF by 31 October 2009
Final report
ISBN:
978-1-925982-35-0
Author:
James Fogarty
Final Report
•
2011-02-24
•
249.90 KB
2009-731-DLD.pdf
Since its inception the Seafood CRC had a budget of approximately $3m available for R&D projects on behalf of its member, the Australian Council of Prawn Fishers (ACPF). However, at the start of the CRC, the ACPF had a number of problems that ensured no sustained effort would be applied to creating projects within this budget. These were a total lack of funding to source administration assistance or travelling expenses to organise meetings.
Therefore, the CRC began assisting the ACPF to modernise their constitution and canvassed the whole of the Australian prawning industry to identify projects that industry bodies felt were relevant to their operations. As a result, this project identified a number of projects that have been completed by the CRC, the creation of a regular industry R&D Forum and the ACPF now has a new Board of Directors.
PROJECT NUMBER
•
2008-206
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED
ORGANISATION:
DJ Sterling Trawl Gear Services
Effects of trawling subprogram: effects of trawling on the benthos and biodiversity - development and delivery of a spatially-explicit management framework for the Northern Prawn Fishery
Project number:
2005-050
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure:
$916,630.00
Principal Investigator:
Rodrigo H. Bustamante
Organisation:
CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere Hobart
Project start/end date:
29 Sep 2005
-
28 Feb 2009
Contact:
FRDC
SPECIES
Recent assessments of the NPF have identified a need for the fishery to be managed at a finer spatial scale than that of the NPF managed area (AFMA 2003, DEH 2003). The stocks of some prawn species appear to comprise regional subpopulations that, although not genetically isolated, mix little enough to be manageable as separate stocks. This view is consistent with the experience that depleted stocks in some regions (e.g. north of Mornington Island and Weipa) have not recovered when stocks elsewhere in the NPF were healthy.
The assessments also identify a need to broaden the scope of management of the NPF beyond prawn stocks, iconic species and bycatch to include benthic habitats and species. Prawn fishing has a number of impacts on the ecosystem, including: removal of target species; removal of bycatch and byproduct; removal of benthic plants and animals; removal of habitat-forming species; disruption of sediment structure; suspension of sediment; and feeding of dolphins, sharks, seabirds, fish and benthic invertebrates with discards (Poiner et al. 1998). Some impacts, such as removal of seagrass in nursery habitats, are known to negatively affect prawn stocks. Other impacts are likely to affect stocks in unknown ways, positively or negatively, and in some habitats may affect the sustainability of the stocks.
Broadening management of the NPF to include impacts on benthic ecosystems is therefore prudent from both an environmental and industry viewpoint. It is also consistent with the recommendations of the NPF strategic assessment (DEH 2003), and will prepare the industry for the increasingly sophisticated environmental awareness of export markets.
Management of the NPF is currently based on sound stock assessment and population monitoring procedures, and uses maximum sustainable yield as the management limit reference point. Spatial stock assessment has been investigated with mixed success, but is not used operationally. Current environmental management focuses on fragile habitats (mainly seagrass), prawn spawning areas, iconic species (e.g. turtles) and bycatch. Recently, ABARE suggested a move towards economic efficiency targets, such as maximum economic yield. (Rose and Kompass 2004).
To do this the FRDC project 2004/022 will integrate the existing stock and economic assessments into an MSE process.
To enable stock, economic and environmental objectives to be effectively pursued in a spatial context and with minimal conflict, the stock, economic, bycatch and ecosystem components of NPF management must be integrated into a single, spatially explicit management framework. This project will contribute with major missing elements for that integration and will develop this needed spatial management framework. Equally, the timing of this proposal is opportune given that stock assessment and monitoring are already mature, interactions with iconic species and bycatch are becoming well understood, and the integration of stock assessment with economics is currently underway. To achieve highly effective technical communication and integration we will involve PIs from past and present projects and a Steering Committee with members from CSIRO AFMA staff and NORMAC-REC and NPF-RAG members.
1. Determine the accumulated effects of trawling on benthic community state and composition.
2. Quantify key benthic ecosystem processes of importance to prawn production and biodiversity along a trawl intensity gradient.
3. Develop, and provide for adoption management strategy evaluation tools for benthic ecosystem impacts.
4. Design and delivery of a spatially explicit management framework for the NPF.
Final report
ISBN:
978 0 643 10380 1
Author:
Rodrigo Bustamante
An integrated monitoring program for the Northern Prawn Fishery: assessing the design and developing techniques to incorporate survey results into fishery assessment
Project number:
2004-099
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure:
$566,865.00
Principal Investigator:
Yimin Ye
Organisation:
CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere Hobart
Project start/end date:
29 Dec 2004
-
31 Jan 2006
Contact:
FRDC
An international review of the NPF tiger prawn assessment agreed with the conclusions of the 2001 assessment that tiger prawn stock levels were critically low, especially for brown tiger prawns. The 2002 assessment further concluded that brown tiger prawn levels were too low and also emphasized the critical need for an independent monitoring program given the confounding and complexities of the catch rate data used as the sole index of abundance in the NPF assessments. The 2003 assessment suggests that brown tiger prawn stocks are recovering but, given the high level of uncertainty in the assessment, this recovery needs to be independently tested.
The survey data used to determine the initial design for this project (see Background) was more than a decade old and did not cover the full study area. Since the first survey, changes have been made to the survey design to improve the accuracy of the abundance estimates obtained from the surveys. This design needs to be further developed and tested. Work has also begun on developing methods for incorporating the results of the surveys into stock assessments, but more research is required to overcome several technical difficulties encountered.
In this proposal, the CSIRO salaries associated with testing the survey design and with developing new methods of incorporating the results into stock assessments are seen as research. We are therefore requesting about $47,000 from FRDC’s MOU funds. For this reason, CSIRO is also supporting the project to the scale of about $86,000. The remainder of the project, some $520,000, will be underwritten by the industry as agreed in NORMAC, June 2003. The industry and NORMAC have also re-affirmed the long-term need for regular industry-funded monitoring surveys based on the output of this project.
There is a need to provide an updated design for the NPF that would work in the long-term to provide indices of abundance for key species and enhance a difficult-to-use commercial catch rate series. Furthermore, this design needs to address target, byproduct and possibly some effects-of-trawling issues to make the best use of the surveys.
1. To refine the design and analyses for two trawl surveys in the Gulf of Carpentaria
2. To undertake a survey in August 2004 to provide biomass and spawning indices of the main commercial prawn species in the Gulf of Carpentaria
3. To undertake a survey in January/February 2005 to provide a recruitment index of the main commercial prawn species in the Gulf of Carpentaria
4. To determine the appropriate scale and frequency of future surveys
5. To spatially map the distribution of the main prawn and byproduct species in the Gulf of Carpentaria
6. To develop methods that can incorporate survey information effectively into stock assessment
Final report
ISBN:
1-921061-27-8
Author:
Yimin Ye
Final Report
•
2006-05-02
2004-099-DLD.pdf
An international review of the Northern Prawn Fishery tiger prawn assessment was carried out in 2001. The review drew attention to the high level of uncertainty in the assessment and recommended that the logbook data be augmented by fishery-independent survey data. In response to the review, industry funded a consultancy project in 2002 to investigate and design an integrated monitoring program for the NPF. Following an industry meeting, NORMAC decided to conduct a one-year pilot survey in 2002/03. The project (FRDC 2002/101) was funded through the FRDC, and included a spawning index survey in August and a recruitment index survey in January. The success of the pilot project led to a FRDC-funded monitoring project (FRDC 2003/075) in 2003/04 and this project (FRDC 2004/099) in 2004/05.
Two surveys were undertaken during the 2004/05 financial year.
PROJECT NUMBER
•
2004-060
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED
ORGANISATION:
DJ Sterling Trawl Gear Services
Bringing economic analysis and stock assessment together in the NPF: a framework for a biological and economically sustainable fishery
Project number:
2004-022
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure:
$495,501.00
Principal Investigator:
Cathy M. Dichmont
Organisation:
CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere Hobart
Project start/end date:
30 Mar 2005
-
31 Aug 2008
Contact:
FRDC
Management arrangements for the NPF tiger prawn fishery are currently chosen so that the spawning stock biomass should recover to the level at which Maximum Sustainable Yield, MSY, is achieved with more than 70% certainty by 2006. MSY is a management reference point that is based solely on biological considerations. From an economic point of view (one that seeks to maximize economic efficiency and fishery returns) this target is inappropriate. The current rebuilding strategy implies that the NORMAC may, over time, be able to reassess the present harsh management measures instituted in the NORMAC agreed effort reduction program in 2001. However, in recent years it has become clear that the fishery is unable to wait for prawn recovery without addressing economic efficiency. NORMAC has identified an urgent need for a further fishery restructure (without compromising biological recovery) so as to maintain economic sustainability and profitability.
An immediate need is for this project to quantify the size of the fleet and length of the season given the biology of ALL the prawn resources. At present it is only broadly possible to answer this question if prawns other than tiger prawns and within year dynamics are ignored (which is unacceptable).
Additionally, this prawn fishery still needs to keep track of its fishing impacts. The main method in the past, with much success, has been through bycatch reduction by TEDs and BRDs. It is now possible, also to include fishing impacts in the modelling mechanisms to allow broader and better informed decision making.
Management advice provided by the NPF Assessment Group needs to take account of the impacts on the stock, economic efficiency and the ecosystem. Input controls are such that several different combinations of fleet size, gear size and season length can produce the same biological outcome but these options would not be equally economically efficient. It is not only overall effort levels that matter for economic efficiency but the manner in which vessels combine inputs in harvest that matters for economic efficiency. This decision over input combinations is sensitive to management decisions and as yet there is no clear economic evaluation of the fishery efficiency under current management practices in a combined biological and economic study.
Limit and target reference points, such as the MSY, in this fishery have only been investigated from the point of view of tiger prawn sustainability. It has been shown in other parts of the world that choosing management arrangements so that fishing effort corresponds to MSY does not necessarily lead to the highest profits and, in fact, lower effort levels generally lead to larger profits and more efficient outcomes. Furthermore, fishing below MSY may also benefit bycatch and byproduct species.
There is therefore a need that future stock assessment undertakes a holistic management view of this prawn fishery. Reference points and management advice should be aimed towards maximising economic return, while ensuring long term target species sustainability and minimising the impact of this fishery on other species wherever possible.
This can only be achieved by:
a) joining the databases held separately by AFMA, CSIRO and ABARE/ANU, and
b) combining the Management Strategy Evaluation frameworks produced by CSIRO on tiger prawns (FRDC 2001/002), ANU/ABARE on economic efficiency (FRRF) and CSIRO investigating effects of trawling on the seabed (FRDC 2002/102).
1. Construct a comprehensive and consistent combined data base for the NPF, by integrating the existing data held by CSIRO and ABARE data.
2. Develop an analysis technique that integrates stock assessment within an economic framework by combining features of the methods developed by ABARE/ANU and CSIRO to enable evaluation of economic efficiency and fishery returns.
3. Develop a basic ecosystem model that synthesises present knowledge about the NPF ecosystem that can be driven at spatial and temporal scales appropriate to stock assessment.
4. Extend the current Management Strategy Evaluation framework to include economic outputs and outputs related to the impact of the fishery on the ecosystem.
5. Evaluate alternative management decision rules for the NPF in terms of their impacts on stock sustainability, economic efficiency, economic returns and ecosystem impacts.
Final report
PROJECT NUMBER
•
2003-075
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED
Designing, implementing and assessing an integrated monitoring program for the NPF: developing an application to stock assessment
For more than a decade the Northern Prawn Fishery assessments have indicated that the tiger prawn resource is overexploited. Deriso’s1 (2001) review of the tiger prawn assessment supported this conclusion and also drew attention to the high level of uncertainty in the assessment. Deriso...
ORGANISATION:
CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere Hobart
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