Northern prawn fishery
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The Northern prawn fishery (NPF) is Australia’s
most valuable Commonwealth Fishery. It extends from Cape Londonderry in
Western Australia north of the Kimberley to the tip of Cape York, with the
Gulf of Carpentaria the major fishing area. CSIRO was instrumental in
developing the fishery in the late 1960’s and took the initiative in
starting a detailed logbook record of catch and effort.
The CMIS Aquatic Resources Monitoring and Modelling
stream are working closely with CSIRO Marine Research,
the Australian Fisheries Management Authority and the Fisheries Research
and Development Corporation to ensure the
sustainability of the fishery. It provides high level statistical
modelling skills and innovative data analysis to various NPF projects.
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The main projects under way at the present time are:
- Northern Prawn Fishery Monitoring. Aquatic Resources Monitoring and Modelling has helped to design and
implement a monitoring program for the NPF. The program is performing
fishery-independent surveys of the stocks of eight species of prawns,
based on a generalised stratified random sampling design. The program
has been collecting data for three years now, and Aquatic Resources Monitoring and Modelling statisticians are
using the collected data to model and predict prawns stocks across the
fishery. A recent media release about the project is available
here.
- Effects of Prawn Trawling. Aquatic Resources Monitoring and Modelling is helping CSIRO
marine scientists in ongoing research that aims to determine the effects
of prawn trawling on other species of fauna within the fishery.
- Bycatch Sustainability. Bycatch is the general term
for the things caught in trawls that aren't the target prawns. In the
NPF, byctach can be divided into two groups: large and obvious animals
such as turtles, sharks, rays, sawfish, sponges and fish; and smaller
things including invertebrates, crustaceans, sponges and corals.
The three-year bycatch monitoring project, which began in 2003, aims to
determine the best methods for monitoring bycatch species in the NPF. It
is ascertaining which species are at risk, and comparing five different
methods of data collections, including fishery-based and
fishery-independent surveys.
- Risk Analysis. This project is carefully investigating
the many aspects
of the stock assessment models and procudures that are currently being
sued. It will check critical assumptions and, where necessary, develop improved
techniques that are more robust to those assumptions and more realistic in their
outputs.
- Fishing Power Analysis. Stock assessment is based on
comparing the catch by a fleet in a fishery to the effort that had to be
put in to achieving that catch. Roughly speaking, if effort increases but the
resulting catch does not the fish stocks have probably decreased.
Measuring effort over a long period of time in turn depends on a
realistic assessment of fishing power, that is the capacity of the fleet
to locate and capture fish, and how that changes over time. Fishing
power depends on factors as diverse as the skill level of the skippers
in the fleet, advances in technology for locating and catching prawns,
advances in communication technology to allow better collaboration
between vessels. In this project fishing power is being assessed by a
careful study of engineering aspects of the situation as well as a
statistical examination of the comparative performance of vessels during
limited time periods and local spatial distributions, when prawn
abundance might reasonably be considered to be constant.
Southern bluefin tuna
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The Southern bluefin tuna project is an international stock
assessment aimed at protecting the spawning stock of this immensely
valuable species. The project is led by CSIRO Marine Research with the
assistance of the Aquatic Resources Monitoring and Modelling stream in
statistical modelling and data analysis.
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The south-east Queensland water quality management
strategy
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The
South-East Queensland Water Quality Management
Strategy forms a regional component of the National Water Quality
Management Strategy, a national program in Australia to achieve
ecologically sustainable use of water resources by protecting and
enhancing their quality, while maintaining economic and social
development.
Stages 1 and 2 of the Strategy culminated in the highly successful
study of water quality and associated ecological health of
Moreton Bay and its estuaries.
Stage 3 consisted of inter-related projects focusing on the
rivers, streams and groundwater within the
study region. The fisheries and aquatic ecosystem sustainability
stream has had collaborative involvement in a multi-disciplinary team
focused on the, “Evaluation/Design and Implementation of Baseline
Monitoring”, which identified management goals for waters and designed
a feedback loop on the success of the strategy. Commonwealth and State
government agencies, as well industry and community groups were
involved in this research task. For more information and additional
links, see
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An interim strategy for the Douglas Shire council
This project developed a strategy for:
- Determining the long term trends in sediment and nutrient loads
discharged into major estuaries and rivers in the Douglas Shire in
north-east Queensland.
- measure the impact on water quality of various management
practices for different land uses.
- Ensure that the methods could also be applied outside of the
Douglas shire catchment.
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Other projects
In addition to stock assessment projects, Aquatic Resources Monitoring and Modelling
researchers are involved in various seabed mapping and
habitat exploration studies jointly with
CSIRO Marine Research. Among these are:
- Northwest Shelf project.
The major input into this major management study is to identify and classify the seabed
habitats in the northwest shelf off Western Australia, to facilitate
management and sustainable development. The study involves integrating
fish trawl data, photographic data, acoustic mapping data and other data
sources to present a comprehensive summary of the knowledge gained in 15
years of data collection as a preliminary to the major classification
exercise.
- Great Barrier Reef Mapping project.
This project is
similar in style and aims to the northwest shelf project, but is located
on the Great Barrier Reef and is at the opening stage when most data is
yet to be collected rather than at a more mature stage.
- Marine Surrogates project.
Like the northwest shelf
project, this is a post hoc study of many years’ data over a
regular grid in the Gulf of Carpentaria. The study is to develop easily
measured surrogate variables that will allow habitat types and important
areas for protection in the Gulf to be easily and rapidly identified.
The study involves data integration and spatial analysis.
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