An industry-based program to monitor seal interactions in the SETF

Funded Activity Summary

Ministerial recommendations following Strategic Assessment of the SESSF Trawl Fishery were that:

18. AFMA, in consultation with industry, EA, researchers and other stakeholders, to further assess and reduce the extent of interactions of seals, cetaceans and seabirds across all sectors of the SESSF, and interactions with syngnathids in the trawl sectors and white sharks in the gillnet and hook sector. AFMA will, for all of the above species:
• within 12 months, establish robust data collection and reporting systems to quantify the extent of interactions; and
• within 3 years assess, trial and implement as appropriate mitigation or avoidance measures including further trials of bycatch exclusion devices and spatial or temporal closures.

For seals and sea lions, AFMA will, within 18 months, extend across the trawl sectors management measures assessed as effective to help reduce interactions with seals and sea lions.

By the time you are considering whether to fund this project, the December 2004 deadline for establishment of the robust data collection and reporting system will have passed.

ISMP observer trips only cover <5% of trawl shots, so there is a lot of uncertainty about relatively rare events such as the interactions of trawl vessels with seals. Power analysis of the ISMP data revealed that to detect even a 50% decrease in the interactions with seals would require an observer program more than 7 times the current level of coverage. This would be likely to cost industry over $4 million dollars annually. If even half of industry accurately recorded their interactions with seals, it would provide a level of monitoring of this issue that would be ten times more powerful than the current ISMP coverage at a cost of <2% of independent observer coverage.

Industry can not afford to do anything other than immediately establish its own program to monitor the interactions of trawl vessels with seals. The current ISMP will be used to audit the industry-based monitoring program.


Objectives:
1. To provide fishers with relevant information on the biology and conservation of seals to help raise industry awareness and encourage increased reporting of seal-fishery interactions.
2. To ensure that Industry is familiar with and applies its Code of Conduct especially in relation to the mitigation of incidental seal bycatch and seal mortality.
3. To establish a robust industry-based monitoring program that provides spatial and temporal information on the level of seal-fishery interactions of SESSF trawl vessels.
4. To develop and trial options to validate the robustness/reasonableness of the data collection and reporting system to quantify the extent of seal interactions and report on the potential uptake by fishers of each option and the extent of effectiveness of each option in meeting the relevant strategic assessment requirements of the EPBC Act.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 30-05-2005

End Date: 01-07-2008

Funding Scheme: Funding Scheme not available

Funding Amount: $87,450.00

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

Bycatch | Fisheries Management | Wild Catch

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