Exploring new resources for the West Coast Deep Sea Crustacean Managed Fishery in Western Australia

Funding Activity

Website
https://www.frdc.com.au/project/2024-009

Funding Status
Active

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Funded Activity Summary

This project will address the strategic challenge of identifying additional resources for the WCDSCMF. With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, export markets in China closed, rendering the highly valued crystal crab fishery uneconomical. When the markets again opened within China and demand grew, the logistics of moving live crab to China became the next hurdle for the fishery due to a lack of air space and the related high cost of transport. Logistics remained difficult for all of 2020 and into 2021. Although fishers are now again able to sell their catch within this premium market, they have started to experience a cost squeeze, with rising costs associated with bait, salaries and their main input, diesel fuel. This fishery necessitates steaming large distances from port to the fishing grounds over expansive areas that they do not fish. If additional fishing gear could be deployed when traversing these distances, the fishery has the opportunity to expand its revenue with little increases in costs.
Using several different pots that have been successful around Australia and the world, this study will deploy these across a minimum of four latitudes along the west coast (additional latitudes added based on vessel behaviour) encompassed by the WCDSCMF. Across these latitudes, we will target 9 depth categories, starting at 150M to 1000M. Additionally, cameras and Conductivity Temperature and Depth (CTDs) loggers will be attached to the pots to analyse the species present, habitat and water chemistry, which allows better prediction of species associations. In doing this, this project will explore and identify possible viable commercial species that the WCDSCMF can include in their landings.


Objectives:
1. Identification of potential new marine crustacean resources located within the water of the WCDSCMF.
2. Document associations between all marine crustacean species and their habitat within the grounds of the WCDSCMF to identify potential un-fished marine resources.
3. Trial modified traps designed to catch potential new crustacean stocks.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 01-12-2024

End Date: 01-12-2026

Funding Scheme: Funding Scheme not available

Funding Amount: $278,047.00

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

Crustacean Fisheries | Fishing Gear | RAC WA

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