Fisheries management across Australia relies on maximising the benefits to the community from a limited seafood resource. A range of stakeholders all have an interest in sustainable fisheries management. Up until now, the focus of fisheries management has been on ensuring sustainability of the marine resources and on legislative and other regulatory controls to support this.

However, a gap remains between fishers creating effective business outcomes for the wider community and the legislative management framework adopted by government. For sustainable environmental outcomes to be really driven by participants in a fishery, there is a need to consider sustainability within a context of industry’s business needs.

The Spencer Gulf Prawn Fishery currently participates within a co-management framework and are taking stronger ownership over the day-to-day management of the resource on which they rely. More and more industry management processes are being based on business concepts, rather than legislative controls. The implementation of environmental management systems that address fisheries risks on the environment, the welfare of its people and the welfare of customers, is an example.

“Self-management” has become a vision for the Spencer Gulf Prawn Fishery as a way of promoting more effective, efficient and equitable management regimes for dealing with the plethora of issues relating to harvesting a public resource. However, there is a need to describe and assess alternative management models.

This project aims to explore the best management option for the fishery in the future as well as provide insight into models for alternative management arrangements that other fisheries may wish to consider.