62,951 results

Responsible fisheries and aquaculture - Activating a comprehensive Ecological, Social, and Governance (ESG) reporting data system to uplift sustainability and traceability

Project number: 2023-024
Project Status:
Current
Budget expenditure: $500,000.00
Principal Investigator: Alistair Hobday
Organisation: CSIRO Environment
Project start/end date: 31 Jul 2023 - 29 Jul 2025
Contact:
FRDC

Need

Verification of fishing and aquaculture sustainability credentials is essential to increase consumer confidence, market access and community benefit. Sector performance currently centres on monitoring fish stocks & economic benefits. However, markets increasingly require traceable evidence of Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) indicators such as provenance, safety, diversity, animal welfare, carbon, biodiversity to inform decisions. To meet this need, this project activates CSIROs Healthcheck ESG Fishing & Aquaculture data system by engaging industry, managers & researchers to identify data gaps and prioritise/collect essential indicators to allow more comprehensive ESG reporting. Data will be compatible and interoperable with existing catalogues/exchanges, for publishing to recognised sustainability frameworks (e.g. Status of Australian Fish Stocks, WhichFish, National Fisheries Plan, UN SDGs). Community surveys will allow adaptive prioritisation of future data/reporting needs.

Objectives

1. Activate an existing ESG data system (Healthcheck) with complementary ESG frameworks (Status of Australian Fish Stocks, Whichfish, Our Pledge, National Fisheries Plan, UN SDGs) and promote data use to increase traceability & sustainability of wild harvest fisheries, aquaculture operations and fish stocks (hereafter, F&A)
2. Increase the number of F&A reporting against ESG frameworks from 20 to 100 stocks (over 90 percent seafood value)
3. Address F&A priority data gaps
4. Increase data access & traceability through use of data exchanges
5. Use feasibility tested data to populate existing/emerging sustainability frameworks (e.g. Status of Australian Fish Stocks, National Fisheries Plan reporting, carbon & nature-based financial disclosure frameworks) and use verified sustainability credentials to demonstrate best practice (e.g. SIAs ‘Our Pledge’, Marine Stewardship Certification)
6. Be interoperable with related frameworks e.g. Australian Agricultural Sustainability Framework, ‘Know & Show your Carbon Footprint’ (funded by Agricultural Innovation Australia)
7. Understand community sustainability sentiment to inform future data gap prioritisation and build confidence
Environment
People

Reviewing solutions to reduce unwanted fisher interactions with elasmobranchs

Project number: 2023-012
Project Status:
Current
Budget expenditure: $375,390.00
Principal Investigator: Jonathan D. Mitchell
Organisation: Department of Primary Industries (QLD)
Project start/end date: 14 Feb 2024 - 14 Oct 2026
Contact:
FRDC

Need

This project will build on the 2022 FRDC National Workshop on Shark Depredation (project number 2021-038) and have four complementary phases through: (1) a detailed review of the peer-reviewed and grey literature to identify and assess the efficacy of the most recently developed mitigation methods, (2) a survey of the scientific community and fishing-industry stakeholders (i.e. fishers, industry representatives, managers) to identify lesser known methods developed and/or used by fishers, (3) a series of workshops to identify the most promising approaches for mitigating depredation and plan the design of field trials, with a stop/go point occurring at the end of this phase based on whether suitable methods are found, and if so, (4) a robust experimental trial of the most promising mitigation method(s) to assess their effectiveness at reducing shark depredation. Phase 4 would be dependent on whether suitable methods can be identified through Phases 1–3. Stakeholder involvement and outreach will be a critical part of this project across all phases. The findings of this project will be widely disseminated via presentations to fishing clubs and industry members, written articles in the FRDC and fishing magazines, a final project report and subsequent peer reviewed publications. All off these outreach activities will be conducted in collaboration with the FRDC Extension Officer network. This will ensure broad adoption of the identified depredation mitigation measure(s).

Objectives

1. Review the existing peer-reviewed and grey literature to collate information on the range of methods trialled to date for reducing shark interactions with fishing and assess their relative effectiveness
2. Survey of the scientific community and fishing-industry stakeholders (i.e. fishers, industry representatives, managers) to identify lesser known methods developed and/or used by fishers which may not have been formally discussed or tested in the peer-reviewed or grey literature.
3. Conduct industry workshops to identify the most promising and practical approaches for mitigating depredation and plan a robust experimental design for future trials
4. Based on the outcomes of Objectives 1–3, conduct robust experimental trials of the most promising mitigation method(s)
5. Extend the results of the workshops and on-water testing to the wider fishing community to facilitate broad adoption of the tested mitigation method(s) (should they prove effective)
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