Prawn trawl sea-snake bycatch reduction device - Assessment, refinement, and extension

Funding Activity

Website
https://www.frdc.com.au/project/2023-155

Funding Status
Active

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Funded Activity Summary

This project is needed to reduce the impact of prawn trawling on sea-snake populations both in Australia and overseas; the technology developed has been proven to reduce the landings of sea-snakes by 80%, however, it has not been properly assessed in terms of why it is so effective and whether sea-snakes escaping are healthy and likely to survive. This project attends to this need. The proposed project activity also includes a refinement phase whereby observations made during the Assessment sea-trials phase will be utilised to improve its performance prior to starting the Extension phase across several Australian prawn fisheries.

Successful reduction in sea-snake landings, as well as other small/moderate sized finfish bycatch, will help meet the sustainable fisheries priority.



Objectives:
1. Comprehensively assess the bycatch reduction performance of the Sea-snake TED/BRD including coverage of when, where, and how sea-snake escape, and what other species are likely to benefit the most from its use.
2. Utilise both the existing Sea Harvest data (e.g., from 2023) and the assessment data from Objective 1 activity, to refine the Sea-snake TED/BRD, noting that these refinements may extend beyond improving exclusion rates and retention rates (prawn), to making the trawl gear fish better and ‘cleaner’.
3. Develop clear uptake guidelines to enable the Sea-snake TED/BRD to be successfully introduced into other prawn fisheries where variance in net design, TED/BRD design, and operations, may, if ignored, compromise its performance.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-06-2024

End Date: 01-11-2025

Funding Scheme: Funding Scheme not available

Funding Amount: $242,000.00

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

Bycatch | Commercial Species | Environmental Impact | Fisheries Management | RAC WA

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