To address the urgent issue of impending over-exploitation of reef-fish resources, the WA Minister for Fisheries has recently approved the Wetline Review to bring WA’s wetline fisheries under more effective management, beginning with the West Coast Bio-region. The West Coast Bio-region supports 56% of WA’s wetline fishing fleet (valued at ~ $4 million dollars), 76% of recreational boat-based line-fishers and most of the charter boat fishery. The issues at stake here are commercial and charter fishing viability, enjoyment of recreational fishing by the majority of WA’s population, provision of local world-class table fish for the non-fishing public and equitable allocation of resources among all sectors. The key needs for management of the west coast demersal scalefish fishery are -
* A better understanding of the spatial scales of the two major fish populations along the West Coast Bio-region to determine their appropriate geographical scales for management.
* Knowledge of the regional variation in the biology of snapper and WA dhufish along the West Coast Bio-region. Age and growth of temperate snapper has not been studied in WA.
* Estimating the exploitation status of the stocks of the major species, snapper and WA dhufish.
* To ensure that sustainability of the resource is the foundation of all management options by educating the stakeholders about the biology and the exploitation of the finfish resources and by involving them in the management process.
Project number:
2003-052
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure:
$514,378.00
Principal Investigator:
Rod Lenanton
Organisation:
Department of Primary Industries and Regional Development (DPIRD) WA
Project start/end date:
29 Jun 2003
-
30 Sep 2007
Contact:
FRDC
SPECIES
1. To examine the level of intermixing among populations of both pink snapper and WA dhufish along the West Coast to determine the appropriate geographical scales for management.
2. To determine whether there are regional differences in the biology of pink snapper and dhufish populations along the West Coast, particularly in growth and reproduction (timing of /size at maturity).
3. To evaluate the spatial variation in the exploitation status of pink snapper and dhufish within the West Coast Bio-region.
4. To develop a suite of alternative management scenarios to assist the multiple fishing sectors of the Bio-region to select and adopt an optimal management strategy.
ISBN:
1 921258 19 5
Author:
Rod Lenanton
Final Report
•
2017-09-29
2003-052-DLD.pdf
West Australian dhufish is endemic to shelf waters of south-western Western Australia (WA). In contrast, snapper (known as "pink snapper" in WA) has a continuous distribution around the southern coastline of mainland Australia and in New Zealand. Dhufish and snapper are the two most important exploited demersal scalefish species in the West Coast Bioregion (WCB) of WA, which extends from Kalbarri (27°S) to Augusta (35°S). This study examined regional variation in the biology of the two species, their stock structure and assessed the status of these stocks in the WCB. Part 1 of this report focused on the stock assessment, which utilized the results from the research on biology and stock structure. This second part of the represents the full results of the biology and stock structure.
