The recreational sector of the Tropical Tuna and Billfish Fishery (TTBF) is an important component of the overall fishery. The recreational fishery has a number of distinct components – the organized club-based sector, the non-club sector and the charter sector. Some catch and catch-effort data, although incomplete, are available from the club-based and charter sectors, while data from the non-club sector, including the magnitude of that sector, are largely lacking. These uncertainties and gaps mean that the total Australian catch by the sector is unknown. However, recreational data may provide relative indicators of stock and fishery performance through time (e.g., CPUE), which could be valuable for monitoring TTBF stocks and the quality of the recreational fishery. This project will summarise existing recreational data available for the TTBF and evaluate their utility for monitoring, to guide immediate application and identify areas requiring further development.

A large component of the total catch of the TTBF recreational sector, is released. Post release mortality is a re-occurring question that has been studied to some extent by the use of satellite telemetry in some target species (striped marlin, swordfish and to a lesser extent, yellowfin tuna). This project will additionally review available data for release rates which are required to apply estimates of post release mortality over the whole fishery.

While all five target species of the TTBF are also caught by the recreational sector, two species – striped marlin and yellowfin tuna – are particularly numerically important. In addition, a relatively new recreational fishery for swordfish has emerged in Victorian and Tasmanian waters, with potential to spread to other States, but is largely unmonitored. This project will assess these important species.

Aside from the five commercial target species within the TTBF, the recreational sector also targets and highly values other billfish species, especially black marlin, blue marlin and sailfish. These species are also caught as bycatch of the domestic commercial sector, although blue and black marlin are not permitted to be landed by commercial licence holders and are therefore discarded. Recreational data sources may provide the only cost-effective monitoring option for stocks of these non-commercial species.