Determining the impact of environmental variability on the sustainability, fishery dynamics and economic performance of the West Coast Prawn Trawl Fishery

Funded Activity Summary

The program addresses the three strategic challenges outlined in FRDC’s Research & Development Plan, 2005-10 namely:
• Natural resources sustainability-development of spatially explicit management models for fisheries sustainability and will include temporal (cycles) effects driven by environment.
• People Development-greater understanding of the processes affecting stocks and better management through industry involvement in decision making.
• Community and Consumer support-through education about factors affecting stocks.
The WCPF production has largely declined over the last 4 years and remains at a depressed state. Industry is faced with paying high interest rates on loans and licence fees for research and management. Moreover, Industry pay for costs (additional to licence fees) associated with fishery independent trawl surveys. There is a need to analyse data and demonstrate that the sustainability and profitability of the fishery is undermined by catastrophic downturns in recruitment attributable to environmental variation linked to El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) events. The fishery is a unique case and will be used as a model to demonstrate the catastrophic impact of environmental disturbance on a fishery for application to the Australian government for funding support through the ‘Exceptional Circumstances” programme.

Objectives:
1. To assemble andpdate analyses of fishery dependent catch-effort and fishery independent trawl survey data and environmental information relating to the West Coast prawn fishery (WCPF).
2. To determine the impact of environmental variation (ENSO and upwelling events) on the sustainability, fishery dynamics and economic performance of the WCPF.
3. To develop a case model for an application for support provided under the Australian governments Exceptional Circumstances program (EC).

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 14-04-2006

End Date: 02-08-2006

Funding Scheme: Funding Scheme not available

Funding Amount: $16,000.00

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

Biomass | Environmental Impact | Fishing Effort | Oceanography | Policy | Stakeholder | Stock Assessment | Survey | Sustainability

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