Modelling environmental changes and effects on wild-caught species in Queensland
Establishing an industry recovery strategy for the Area 3 zone of the Western Australian Abalone Managed Fishery
Bursaries for emerging leaders in the Southern Rock Lobster industry to attend the 2019 Trans-Tasman Lobster Congress.
FRDC Community Engagement Strategy Evaluation Framework
The objective for this project is to design and pilot an M&E framework and toolkit for fisheries and aquaculture community engagement. The M&E Framework support a more systematic approach to industry evaluation and generate useful information to support industry decision-making by clearly articulating priority outcomes. While the evaluation toolkit will provide industry organisations with practical resources for planning, conducting and learning from the evaluation of community engagement processes
Final report
Developing FRDC’s 2020-2025 RD&E Plan
Section 19 of PIRD Act requires R&D corporations to prepare R&D Plans for each consecutive 5-year period. Each plan is to include (at a minimum):
· a statement of the Corporation’s objectives and priorities for the period to which the plan is expressed to relate; and
· an outline of the strategies that the Corporation intends to adopt in order to achieve those objectives.
Under section 10 of the Funding Agreement between FRDC and the Department of Agriculture and Water Resources (DAWR), FRDC is required to develop a consultation plan, which seeks to:
• explain the purpose and objectives of consultation to inform the 2020-2025 RD&E Plan;
• describe who will be consulted;
• outline methods proposed; and,
• explain how input provided will be used.
FRDC is to obtain DAWR approval for the consultation plan prior to commencement of activities.
In order to develop an RD&E Plan which accurately interprets and responds to RD&E needs for Australia’s fishing and aquaculture community it is important to understand the aspirations, pain points, risks and opportunities of each sector over the intended life of the plan through undertaking broad consultation. It is also important to understand the current situation of the fishing and aquaculture (F&A) community (including indigenous, wild catch, aquaculture and recreational, and post-harvest sectors). The situational analysis should provide an updated understanding of what fishing and aquaculture looks like in Australia today, who is involved, what drives them, how they are performing, how the product (if retained) is used, what are the main dominant risks and trends. An earlier situational analysis delivered as an output of FRDC Project 2014/503.20 provides a useful template.
Finally, it is for any RD&E plan to be informed by an understanding of likely future trends, risks and opportunities facing Australia’s F&A community in the future. This requires:
· compilation of evidence to enable consideration of likely future geopolitical, social, economic, environmental and/or technical changes likely to occur in the future, and drivers of those changes;
· generation of projections relating to supply and demand for seafood products as well as cultural and/or recreational time use
Final report
that ran in parallel to the CSIRO contribution. This process involved a series of stakeholder workshops and follow-up discussions, to which CSIRO staff were occasional observers.
The models were then tested to see how well they compared to the dynamics described in the future scenarios, and here model predictions were found to be highly consistent with the dynamics played out in the two future scenarios – that is, both worlds are likely.
Removing seabirds from the otterboard trawler danger zone.
The conservation status of seabirds means that any level of interaction is of serious concern. The only known mitigation strategy known to reduce interactions to almost zero is to not discard biological material (discards and offal) while fishing gear is in the water.
In late March AFMA advised industry that vessels fishing south of 38.00 (the Victorian southern coast) would not be able to discard biological material while fishing. This regulation is to be rolled out in two phases starting executed in July and September 2019.
AFMA contend that this will reduce catches on impacted (southern) trawlers by 20% but SETFIA believes that this might be up to 40%. AFMA and SETFIA agree that the SETF's revenue will reduce by $6-12m from $40m to $28-34m in its current form. Additional AFMA management costs associated with seabird mitigation will bring 2019/20 levies to $3m which will be 9-11% of revenue.
SETFIA and AFMA have agreed that in principle exemptions can be granted IF vessels can prove that seabirds are no longer attracted to the area where trawl warps enter the water (the "danger" zone).
The purpose of this urgent application is to seek emergency funding to fund innovation around how trawl vessels might stop birds from entering this danger zone. Without a solution it is likely that given the increase in levies of $0.5-1.0m and decrease in revenue, many southern trawl vessel operations will cease to be profitable and leave the fishery. Further, small New Zealand trawlers are not subject to any seabird mitigations; this fleet is the main competitor to SETF sales. As vessels exit the fishery the levy base will be spread across remaining vessels and the fishery may be reach a tipping point in which it collapses. The SETF is the major supplier of local finfish to the Sydney and Melbourne fish markets and it the largest Commonwealth managed finfish fishery in Australia.