What could Australia’s total sustainable wild fisheries production be?
Australian fisheries are small by world standards, in terms of production, but have a large geographic, ecological, social and political footprint. Wild fisheries production averaged around 160,000 tonnes per annum between 2010-11 and 2012-13. The National Marine Science Plan notes that Australia needs to address our current and potential future gaps in food self-sufficiency and improve production as part of reducing our reliance on imports, as we currently import 72 per cent of our seafood. However, it has been reported in recent years that there is little scope for an overall increase in wild fisheries production. For example in Working Together: the National Fishing and Aquaculture RD&E Strategy 2010, it states “little opportunity exists to increase the volume from wild-catch fisheries”. Such statements have never been formally tested and could, if they are believed, constrain future investment by government and industry.
The aim of this project is to take the first national look at what sustainable national fisheries production could be. The project will consider catches of key commercial species at suitable target reference points. If, for a particular fishery or species, these are not identified then Bmsy will be the default. In addition, the potential for increased catches of selected by-product and by-catch species will also be considered. All jurisdictions will contribute to the project. The focus of this proposal is on the biological sustainability and limits to sustainable catches in the long term. Other factors such as whether there is a market for the potential production and whether the economic value will be optimal if production is maximized are clearly important, along with other market and economic issues, but will not be considered here.
This proposed project can be seen as a first stage. A second stage may be required if it is determined that there is potential for a large increase in production. A second stage project would look at species interactions (that could prevent all species being fished at their target reference points simultaneously), implications of an increased fishery footprint required to achieve the extra catch, and market issues.
Final report
This project was a first attempt at estimating the total potential maximum sustainable yield (MSY) from Australia’s commercial fisheries. The project considered only key commercial species and selected by-product species. Estimating equilibrium MSY where there was a formal stock assessment was relatively easy, as the assessment models provide this information. Where existing MSY estimates were available, these were used. In other cases, a multi-level assessment framework for estimating MSY was developed and related software addressed data-rich to data-poor assessment methods.
