Changing marine climate is driving species south, impacting recreational and commercial fishers and biodiversity and conservation values. At the same time, the local environment is changing the capacity of ecosystems to respond to an increasing array of environmental pressures. Is adapting our social and economic systems the only option for conservation managers and planners, or can we increase the resilience of the local environment to the increasing pressures? Can we gain time, or could we even influence the trajectory of change?

Assisted translocation (within the historic range) may preserve isolated populations of terrestrial animals. Is this appropriate in marine environments? Translocation typically emphasizes individual species. Would a more influential approach be to translocate species that would benefit the receiving ecosystem? We propose to develop the protocols and safeguards to reintroduce a key temperate reef predator – the blue groper – that became locally extinct in Tasmania over a century ago. The blue groper is a temperate wrasse that grows to over 50kg. It is a charismatic component of the NSW fish fauna interacting with snorkelers, divers and recreational fishers. Its diet includes the long-spined sea urchin currently establishing in Tasmania. Rearing and transporting similar species is well understood and the sequential hermaphroditism potentially provides the opportunity to introduce only larger male fish.

This will be a test case to determine whether translocating marine species is a viable option to improve resilience to climate change and what processes, knowledge and changes in policy are required before attempting this. Our application is regional but the implications are national (and global). While we are using the blue groper as the focus for our work, we will be exploring more generally the opportunities for assisted translocation, local enhancement to increase the resilience of temperate reefs, and the protocols and safeguards that would be required.

The closures to fishing declared as part of the Jurien Bay Marine Park are administered by the WA Department of Conservation and Land Management and are intended to conserve marine biodiversity and ecosystem function. The potential effectiveness of these closures for protecting both fished and unfished species, relative to alternative, more traditional, fisheries management strategies, is very uncertain. We propose to identify food web linkages between important fish stocks and other biota in the Jurien region and to evaluate how the food webs, and hence the fish stocks, respond to fishing closures. This research will address two of the high priority research areas for the WA FRAB: evaluating marine park planning (Priority 5); and developing an understanding of the knowledge requirements for cost-effective, ecosystem-based approaches to fisheries (Priority 6). In addition, it provides approaches to assess further the impact and role of rock lobsters and key finfish e.g. snapper, wrasse, dhufish, baldchin groper, in the broader ecosystem. This is one of the questions identified explicitly for investigation by the Rock Lobster Ecosystem Scientific Reference Group and an essential element of strategies to address the ESD obligations of fisheries. Although initially focused on the Jurien region, the qualitative and quantitative modelling approaches will increase the general understanding and develop knowledge that can be used to explore management options, including the design of protected areas, in other parts of temperate Western Australia. This project will provide approaches to promote the ecologically sustainable use of natural fisheries resources along the temperate west coast, thus helping to meet the requirements for Fisheries under the EPBC Act.

Successful management of a fishery for any species requires a thorough understanding of how that species will respond to different levels of exploitation. Such an understanding depends on managers possessing certain crucial biological data that have been acquired using an appropriate sampling regime, laboratory techniques and analysis of the results. The key biological data that are required for a species are as follows: (a) age and size compositions, growth curves and age and length at maturity for both sexes, (b) length and age at sex change in the case of hermaphroditic species, (c) location and duration of spawning, (d) fecundity and (e) estimates of mortality. These data enable scientists to assess the status of the stock(s) and thereby provide advice to managers, who are then in a strong position to formulate appropriate management strategies.

The following three species have been identified as “indicator” species for management purposes: western blue groper Achoerodus gouldii, queen snapper Nemadactylus valenciennesi and bar-tailed flathead Platycephalus endrachtensis (Fisheries Management Paper 153; Report of 2003 RFAC/RecFishWest research planning meeting). However, there are no reliable data on the crucial biological characteristics listed above for any of these species in Western Australian waters (e.g. FishBase). Managers thus require these data for management purposes.

Since the results of many of the age and growth studies of fish species in various regions are not of the standard required to produce reliable data for management purposes, there is a need to produce guidelines on the extent and quality that are required of such studies for management purposes.