National Snapper Workshop - Rebuilding our iconic Snapper stocks

Project number: 2019-085
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $59,857.04
Principal Investigator: Jonathan McPhail
Organisation: Department of Primary Industries and Regions South Australia (PIRSA)
Project start/end date: 29 Sep 2019 - 29 Sep 2020
Contact:
FRDC
TAGS
Workshop
Workforce
Stock Assessment
Stakeholder
Resource Rehabilitation
SPECIES
Snapper

Need

There are numerous Australian jurisdictions that have faced and are currently facing management challenges with Snapper stocks in decline. It proposed that a national Snapper workshop is needed to bring together from each jurisdiction fisheries managers, scientists and key stakeholders from the commercial and recreational fishing sectors to:

(1) Communicate findings on Snapper research, gain an insight into the challenges, successes and learnings from management arrangements implemented in each jurisdiction.
(2) Identify a national approach to collaborate and manage a Snapper stock that crosses jurisdictional boundaries
(3) Develop a set of national R&D priorities for Snapper, in particular dealing with the issue of ‘hyperstability’.
(4) Develop a tool kit to support fisheries managers recover Snapper stocks.

The main aim of the workshop is for each jurisdiction to exchange information on Snapper and to ensure that Snapper R&D has a national co-ordinated approach that addresses the challenges being faced, makes the most efficient use of available resources and integrates key stakeholders such as the recreational and commercial fisheries, government and research providers.

Objectives

1. To identify key issues and challenges for Snapper, review Snapper research, and critique jurisdictional management arrangements.
2. To explore a national approach to collaborate and manage cross-jurisdictional Snapper stocks.
3. To explore and develop a set of innovative national R&D priorities for Snapper that address the challenges being faced.
4. To develop a tool kit to support fisheries managers to recover depleted Snapper stocks.

Final report

ISBN: 978-0-6482204-5-9
Authors: I. Cartwright J.W McPhail I Knuckey I Smith T N. Rayns and M. Steer
Final Report • 2020-09-21 • 1.08 MB
2019-085-DLD.pdf

Summary

The Department of Primary Industries and Regions organised and ran a national Snapper Workshop in Adelaide from the 12 to 14 November 2019 with funding from FRDC and the strong support of the Australian Fisheries Managers Forum. The workshop objectives were to:
  1. identify key issues and challenges for Snapper, review Snapper research and critique jurisdictional management arrangements;
  2. explore a national approach to collaborate and manage cross-jurisdictional Snapper stocks;
  3. explore and develop a set of national R&D priorities for Snapper that address the challenges being faced; and,
  4. develop a tool kit to support fishery managers to recover depleted Snapper stocks
Government representatives, independent scientists, fishery managers and Fisheries Research and Development Corporation representatives attended all three days of the workshop. Commercial, charter and recreational fishing representatives attended the last day of the workshop.

Related research

All research
research
Environment
Environment
Industry
PROJECT NUMBER • 2023-085
PROJECT STATUS:
CURRENT

Snapper Science Program: Theme 1 - Biology and Ecology

1. Quantify the abundance of age 0+ Snapper in northern Spencer Gulf and Gulf St Vincent to provide relative estimates of recruitment for 2024, 2025, and 2026. Examine the otoliths of these fish to improve the understanding of early life history processes.
ORGANISATION:
Flinders University

Optimising Compliance Outcomes in Recreational Fisheries

Project number: 2019-011
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $20,605.90
Principal Investigator: Jade Lindley
Organisation: University of Western Australia (UWA)
Project start/end date: 1 Dec 2019 - 6 Jun 2021
Contact:
FRDC
TAGS
Sustainability
Recreational Fishing
Rac Wa
Rac Sa
Human Dimensions Research
SPECIES
Blue Swimmer Crab

Need

This research questions how best to optimise compliance within the WA and SA blue swimmer crab fishery. Optimising 'cooperative compliance' in a fishery should consider the perspectives of those paying management costs, those tasked with management and fishers themselves, yet little formal study exists of the perceptions of the effectiveness of recreational fisheries rules and their impact on the overall fishing experience.
WA Peel-Harvey and SA blue swimmer crab recreational fisheries are large, iconic, accessible and popular fisheries. A licence is not required and inspections often reveal high levels of noncompliance with regulations, requiring intensive education and enforcement efforts. These fisheries present a challenge: minimising management costs and restrictions while maximising recreational fisher enjoyment can be conflicting aims.
There is clearly a need to identify optimal education and enforcement strategies that can be demonstrated to work well in a recreational context of low inspection coverage (typically fewer than 10% of fishing opportunities are subject to inspection in recreational fisheries) with a cryptic fisher population that lacks licencing or registration requirements to target education.
FRDC 2014/206 led to development of a Compliance Outcomes Framework adopted by WA and SA, but a need remains to develop metrics for that framework. Perceptions of the effectiveness of rules and their impact on the recreational fishing experience could meet that need.
Prospective longitudinal studies are the gold standard in measuring change over time and demonstrating causality for that change. To determine the cost-effectiveness of such a study for a fishery, there is a need for scoping work to ascertain suitability of existing datasets, sampling methodologies and what skills and experience would be required to undertake the work. This project will consider those issues and others to determine the feasibility of undertaking such longitudinal studies to routinely assess the effectiveness of fisher education and enforcement strategies and how rules impact on fisher enjoyment.
This application targets Human Dimensions Research Goal 2: Understanding compliance behaviour of fishers.

Objectives

1. To characterise the quality and contents of compliance datasets held by WA and SA government agencies and specific to two recreational blue swimmer crab fisheries, in order to evaluate their adequacy for social science research objectives such as longitudinal studies.
2. To analyse existing blue swimmer crab compliance datasets for trends and insights and test those findings against reference groups.
3. To contrast recreational blue swimmer crab fisher’s attitudes towards compliance in WA and SA to their own, and the other jurisdictions' management frameworks.
4. Determine whether illegal catch can be estimated based on assessment of available data and analysis of drivers of non-compliance.
5. To conduct a proof of concept that scopes out the resources, expertise and design necessary to show changes in blue swimmer crab fisher behaviour and attitudes and demonstrate any causality to education and enforcement strategies and their effect on 'cooperative compliance'.
6. To better understand how recreational blue swimmer crab fishers in both jurisdictions obtain information and respond to education and enforcement strategies.

Final report

ISBN: 978-0-646-86519-5
Author: Jade Lindley
Final Report • 1.42 MB
2019-011-DLD.pdf

Summary

This study investigated strategies to enhance compliant participation among recreational fishers, using the Peel-Harvey Blue Swimmer Crab fishery in Western Australia (WA) and the Blue Swimmer Crab fishery in South Australia (SA) as case studies.