Decadal scale projection of changes in Australian fisheries stocks under climate change
Tactical Research Fund: synthesis of existing information, analysis and prioritisation of future monitoring activities to confirm sustainability of the red-legged banana sub-fishery in the Joseph Boneparte Gulf
Environmentally sustainable development of barramundi cage aquaculture
Ralf Yorque Symposium and Ecopath with Ecosim Training Course
Development of a user-friendly desktop tool based on existing Atlantis runs
Fisheries Managers often need to rapidly explore possible impacts of a range of potential changes to a fishery (for example, changes in fuel and fish prices, biophysical, environmental and economic drivers of the fishery, and alternative fisheries management regulations). Unfortunately, the preparation and implementation time involved in an end-to-end ecosystem modeling project (e.g. the Alternative Management strategies for commonwealth fisheries) means that delivery time is typically years (likely 3-4 years) at a potential cost of millions. This is simply too slow to be of use to many of the rapid turn around questions management bodies are presented with. However, the decisions that need to be made would benefit from system-level strategic information if it were available; and fisheries managers and other stakeholders, including the fishing industry, would gain significant insights into the fishery from the ability to explore such changes without the need to undertake specific research projects.
To this end the best approach is to preemptively create a library of runs that span a large number of potential management strategies and scenarios of interest and to have it to hand as an accessible data source through a user-friendly interface that can be explored from the user’s desktop. This need has been identified by key stakeholders, like the AFMA managers and lead to the ComFRAB call for this project. In the short term this tool is best developed and applied around a library of runs set up for southeastern waters and the SESSF, but the benefit can be much broader than that – both in terms of creating a framework for future use with other Atlantis (or multispecies) model output and indirectly by providing a way of interrogating a complex marine system to gain general insights into their function and implications of different forms of management.
Final report
Development of research methodology and quantitative skills for integrated fisheries management in WA
(1) Fisheries WA and Murdoch University have identified a need for developing new models that are based on integrating fisheries data with data on fish populations and communities and habitat requirements, and thereby facilitating the production of high quality management plans aimed at ensuring the ecological sustainability of fisheries resources in Western Australia.
(2) There is an increasing need for developing the quantitative approaches for analysing, in a more sophisticated manner, the biological data on fish populations that are traditionally used for developing management plans for fish stocks, as well as for developing appropriate new models (see Point 1)
(3) Fisheries WA, Murdoch University and other agencies have also identified the need for producing a continuous supply of high-quality scientists, who have the quantitative skills required for understanding and developing ecosystem and fishery models, and who are thus suitably trained for employment in areas related to the implementation of integrated fisheries and ecosystem management.