Adult migration, population replenishment and geographic structure for snapper in South Australia

Funded Activity Summary

Management of the snapper fishery of South Australia has recently attained a level of heightened political sensitivity, reflecting the need to optimise the strategic approach. Nevertheless, from relevant discussions it is apparent that our understanding of the life-history is too poor to predict likely outcomes from suggested regional management strategies.

For this snapper fishery there is a need to optimise management based on a better understanding of the life-history and population biology, particularly with regard movement patterns of adult fish. It is currently unknown the extent to which fish move between different geographic regions, and thus the extent to which such behaviour contributes to the natural processes of sustaining the different regional populations. Such adult movement will determine the extent to which regional populations are independent, discrete, and separate sub-populations. Adult movement and stock structure are fundamental to identifying the appropriate spatial scale at which the population dynamics work, and thus the appropriate spatial scale at which fishery management should be applied.


Objectives:
1. to determine whether adult fish from Spencer Gulf, Gulf St. Vincent and other regions migrate to the continental shelf, and where such fish then migrate in order to spawn - do they return to their regions of origin or is subsequent movement determined by other exogenous factors ?
2. to determine the stock structure - does the South Australian snapper population constitute a single, large, inter-mixed population or is it divisible into numerous discrete sub-populations ?
3. to determine whether adult fish collected from particular regions originate as juveniles from those regions or whether they constitute a mixture from different regions.
4. to produce a final report that synthesises all information on snapper movement and stock structure in South Australia, including that from this study on otolith microchemistry with that from tagging studies and work on the analysis of genetics.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 20-10-2002

End Date: 01-12-2004

Funding Scheme: Funding Scheme not available

Funding Amount: $109,089.00

Funder: Fisheries Research and Development Corporation

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

There are no FoR codes available for this funding activity

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

There are no SEO codes available for this funding activity

Other Keywords

Analytics | Biology | Distribution | Habitat | Migration | Stock Assessment

Related Links