National and international fisheries management policies require that the exploitation of fisheries resources should be conducted in a manner consistent with the principles of ecologically sustainable development, in particular the need to consider the impact of fishing activities on non-target species and the long term sustainability of the marine environment. AFMA’s Ecological Risk Management (ERM) framework details a process for assessing and progressively addressing the impacts that fisheries’ activities have on marine ecosystems based on the ecological risk assessment for the effect of fishing (ERAEF). The ERAEF, which assesses species-by-species impacts of fishing on all species encountering a particular fishing activity, is perhaps the most comprehensive assessment method supporting ecosystem-based fisheries management currently available. This method has been applied to the majority of Commonwealth fisheries, however, these assessments only take account of risk to individual species from individual Commonwealth fisheries or sub-fisheries. It is the cumulative impact from all fisheries/sub-fisheries on each individual species that determines the species’ overall sustainability. However, the cumulative risk to a species across all Commonwealth and state-managed fisheries in which it is captured cannot currently be quantified at level 2 in ERAEF, the productivity-susceptibility assessment (PSA), nor at level 3 sustainability assessment for fishing effect (SAFE) for most fisheries. A recent study shows potentially very high levels of overlap for many species across several Commonwealth fisheries, and some state-based fishery assessments have also highlighted the importance of extending the ERAEF toolbox to include a cumulative risk assessment tool. There is an urgent need to develop methods and conduct ecological risk assessments on the cumulative impact of all species encountered by multiple fisheries.
Project number:
2011-029
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure:
$197,367.00
Principal Investigator:
Shijie Zhou
Organisation:
CSIRO Oceans and Atmosphere Hobart
Project start/end date:
28 Sep 2011
-
14 Oct 2012
Contact:
FRDC
1. Scope the range of applications and review existing methods for measuring cumulative effects of capture fishing on species that are caught across a number of different fisheries or sub-fisheries.
2. Scope the different data sources that are currently available and those that may be required to include assessment of cumulative effects under future ERAs.
3. Develop methods for assessing cumulative risk from multiple fisheries or sub-fisheries including recreational and international fisheries, where feasible, on each individual fish species and stock, especially methods that can be applied to data poor fisheries.
4. Apply the method to selected Commonwealth fisheries that operate in the same area with high levels of effort and multiple gear types, e.g., in the southeast region, with further consultation with AFMA.
5. Describe the trade-off between the costs of collecting data for ERA as compared to the benefit returned to the industry/management of the approach.
PROJECT NUMBER
•
2023-154
PROJECT STATUS:
CURRENT
Inshore fishery alternative and innovative gears partnership
1. Scoping of alternative gear types
ORGANISATION:
Department of Agriculture and Fisheries
PROJECT NUMBER
•
2023-092
PROJECT STATUS:
CURRENT
Futures of Seafood. Wild. Aquaculture. Recreational. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders
1. Provide a contemporary description on the state of play of Australia’s seafood system, the supply chain, markets and its reach into communities.
ORGANISATION:
Blue Economy Cooperative Research Centre Co-Ltd
PROJECT NUMBER
•
2023-090
PROJECT STATUS:
CURRENT
Pathways for recognising recreational fishing considerations in fisheries management frameworks
1. Critically analyse the effectiveness of contemporary fisheries management frameworks as vehicles for driving fishery management for returns to the broader/recreational community with consideration of all resource users.
ORGANISATION:
Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) Hobart