The recreational sector has many unmet needs, particularly its capacity to partner with research institutions, undertake its own R&D and understand the social and economic importance of recreational fishing. It needs skills, information and other resources to engage professionally and constructively in fisheries management, marine planning, resource allocation and access planning processes. Close links with the proposed Recreational Fishing Industry Development Strategy are needed for a coordinated national framework to R&D to be provided through Recfishing Research.

The first task in identifying the national priorities and more importantly the key areas for investment has been completed. The second task, establishing projects to address those priorities, is the major remaining challenge. To benefit from the investment to date will require a concerted effort over the next few years to have projects developed to fill the gaps that have been identified. Progress requires investment of resources and coordination of how they are deployed. Working with FRDC, Recfish Australia, RFAC and industry and government stakeholders Recfishing Research will assist in identifying those best able to address these priorities and work with them to develop suitable projects. It is expected that Recfishing Research will need to develop some new approaches to ensure that projects will address the national priorities rather than just expect projects to address the priorities.

In order to empower the recreational fishing industry and bring about real change the other critical need is continued improvement in the extension of research information. This is still recognised as a weakness in many research projects and there is a continuing need to improve in this area. There is a need to develop new and innovative ways to get research results to end users, particularly in ways that will improve acceptance and uptake of new knowledge generated by the research.

The Western Rock Lobster fishery is one of Australia’s most valuable commercial fishery generating a landed value of $191.6 million in 2009.

Rising costs, a strong Australian dollar, increased competition, environmental challenges and the global financial crisis has resulted in a halving of the landed value of the fishery over the last 10 years. This economic performance has been exacerbated by a limited entry management system that creates perverse incentives that lead to overcapitalisation in catching technology and dissipation of economic rents through competition for catch. In summary maintaining the current management regime for this fishery will inevitably cause continued poor economic performance.

The uncertainty over recruitment into the fishery due to poor puerulus settlement has resulted in management intervention to cut catches to build up breeding stocks has resulted in further declines in the value of the fishery and a rationalisation of boat numbers.

As a result of these pressures in early 2010 both WAFIC and WRLC approached the Western Australian Government requesting that the fishery management arrangements for the fishery be fast tracked to an output control system for the 2010/11 season.

The truncated period for introduction gives the regulatory agency and the industry only 4 months to make the necessary legal and operational changes to ensure its introduction by 15 November 2010.

In order to tap into the benefits that this shift to ITQ can provide there is a need to provide targeted extension on aspects of this management system to a large group of fishermen over a short period of time so as to facilitate a smooth transistion.

The benefits of this reform to the industry and WA community from published reports include:

- Estimates of up to $80 million in additional revenue per annum; and

- Safer workplace and greater crew retention.

In many states and regions around Australia there is a lack of current and reliable recreational fisheries data (e.g. participation rates, catch) that can be used in decision-making processes. Since the stock boundaries of some recreationally-important species can span several State and Federal jurisdictions, reliable stock-specific data is needed. The results of the last national recreational fishing survey undertaken in 2000-2001 are now considered outdated in many respects, or are of limited use for rarely-caught species and some fisheries or regions due to issues of scale.

Since the national survey, various recreational fishing surveys have been undertaken by State fisheries agencies to address their own specific management issues. These surveys have generally been telephone-diary approaches based on the National survey methodology. Additionally, community-based recreational fishing data collection have been undertaken at regional levels by community and recreational fishing groups. However, there has been a lack of coordination between agencies to report at a national level. Therefore, there is a need to assess the feasibility of aggregating data from these surveys to provide reliable up-to-date information at regional and national levels.

The LCF and MSF have indicated that they want to reconnect consumers with local sources of seafood, for enhanced freshness, food safety and assurance of sustainable fishing methods, including creating new markets for independent fisher suppliers, while at the same time allowing consumers to invest in their community and nearby ecosystems. Overall the LCF and MSF want to convey the contribution they make to the local and regional economy, in particular supporting healthy communities and local fishers being environmental stewards of the resource. Having said this, the LCF and MSF have limited capacity, skills and tools to facilitate or build upon this reconnection. In addition to this, recently commissioned research by the Australian Government Department of Agriculture found the seafood industry is not front of mind for consumers.