Tactical Research Fund: Working on Water - a careers promotion program for marine-based sectors
The FRDC's 'People Development Program 2008-2013' has identified the need to "build workforce capacity".
TSIC's People Development Working Group identified the need to:
- foster stronger relationships between education-training sector and local seafood industry
- generate positive exposure of seafood industry career pathways
- increase uptake of industry jobs by young entrants
At the State level there is specific need to:
Support the sustainability of the Tasmanian Program by formally evaluating its outcomes and documenting corporate knowledge gained.
At the national level the FRDC's People Development Program has identified the need to:
"Support development and promotion of career information for seafood industries".
This project will address this need by developing resources which will enable the successful Working on Water Program Model to be piloted in other States.
Final report
Assessing the impact of proposed marine protected areas on South Australian rock lobster catches
Tasmania's Marine Atlas
Long-term recovery of trawled marine communities 25 years after the world’s largest adaptive management experiment
Marine Discovery Centres Australia annual network meeting
Role of marine reserves in sustainable management of Australia's ocean estate - review of the Heard Island and McDonald Islands bioregion
The HIMI bioregion supports significant marine conservation values as well as a highly sustainable, and valuable commercial fishing industry. Typically, marine parks/reserve development processes are tasked with developing marine spatial planning arrangements that achieve a balance between preserving conservation values of the area and maintaining/promoting human activities through the principles of Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD). However, key uncertainties remain regarding the policy priorities and how the final design of marine parks are objectively determined.
This project will provide an independent assessment of the framework used for original design of the HIMI Marine Reserve in 2002, the review in 2014, and the current review to provide recommendations for future development. The project will also explore how/if the policy objectives have been achieved since inception . Furthermore, this project will explore the potential of a quantitative risk-based approach to provide for minimising the uncertainties in the Marine Protected Area (MPA) development processes and deliver an objective framework.
In addition, the project will explore the current HIMI marine reserve framework, the associated commercial fishing industry arrangements and how they intersect with regard to:
Regulation
• Regulatory processes to minimise impacts of commercial fishing
• Legislative framework currently in place for Ecological Risk Assessment/ESD, Ecosystem-Based Fisheries Management, bycatch policy strategic research plans
• Marine Protected Areas review processes
• Statutory Fishing Rights (SFRs)
Economic impacts
• Commercial fishing viability
• Statutory fishing rights
• Permitted fishing gear types – (e.g. potential removal of MSC certified trawl fisheries with additional implications on research activity)
Biological impacts
• Impact on juvenile toothfish index of abundance and icefish estimates – accuracy of tracking stock will be significantly reduced if ability to trawl is removed (i.e. random stratified trawl survey impacted)
• Stock assessment model ability to consider toothfish population structure if longline fishery further constrained
• Climate change and effects of population shift
• Increasing policy position of MPAs as fisheries management tools
• Increased localised depletion and constrained ability to distribute commercial fishing effort
Social Impacts
• Market access
• Community sentiment