Project Title/
Description / FRAB support? / FRAB
Comments
Improving the understanding of biological and environmental factors affecting the vulnerability of the commercially fished and recreationally important invertebrate – Donax deltoids (Pipi)and hence improving their sustainable management. / Yes / FRAB determined that it was a small project to establish baseline data on the parasite and for risk mitigation. Need to explore other jurisdictional interest in this project
Addressing declining cephalopod catches in eastern Australia: fishery-related or environmental variation? / No / More preliminary work required to address to the perceived decline in fish stocks.Need to explore other jurisdictional interest in this project
Bringing Low Impacts and Fuel Efficiency (LIFE) to prawn trawls by modifying spreading mechanisms and trawls to reduce drag, habitat contact and by-catch. The projectseeks to develop state-of-the art, low impact and fuel efficient prawn-trawling systems. Ultimately, developing such environmentally friendly fishing gears will help to ensure the future of prawn trawling in NSW. / Yes as a National project / Needs strong involvement of managers.
Strong adoption pathways need to be comprehensively detailed in the EOI.
Need to explore other jurisdictional interest in this project and for this to be a National project
Evaluating the role of spatial closures and connectivity in recruitment dynamics of eastern king prawn in NSW while minimising impacts on by-catch such as mulloway. This project could address four specific objectives:
  1. Quantify egg production in inshore areas of southern spawning grounds, and source-sink relationships between these areas and important estuarine nursery areas;
  2. Apply existing survey techniques (Kennelly et al. 1993, Courtney et al. 1996) to quantify the abundance and size-structure of EKP, School prawn, and juvenile mulloway in current inshore closure (including both permanent and short-term ones) and non-closure areas;
  3. Quantify connectivity between key estuaries and current inshore closure and non-closure areas, and connectivity with offshore trawling grounds;
  4. Develop an economically feasible survey design to derive an ongoing recruitment index for eastern king prawn, based on egression of running prawns from key estuaries in NSW;
This project will achieve this through the first directed survey for EKP in the coastal areas of NSW, an area that has been largely ignored by previous research, coupled with tag-recapture work, and fishery observer surveys (linking with the 2016-2017 NSW ocean prawn trawl observer program). / Yes / Clearly stipulate the RD&E component.
Developing the under-utilised cross-jurisdictional Royal red prawn fishery. Such a project could address five objectives:
  1. Collection of sex-specific, length-based data in NSW and Commonwealth jurisdictions,
  2. Derivation of estimates of gonadal development/spawning condition across space and time;
  3. Assessment of the stock structure of the species off the east coast;
  4. Trial of novel aging techniques to Royal red prawn (and attempted validation), to determine if aging of the species is possible (to support development of age-based models);
  5. Estimation of growth, mortality, and yield-per-recruit for Royal red prawn.
This project might also include an industry-led component to develop post-harvest processing methods, and also develop more effective marketing of the product to Australian consumers. / No / Not a priority at this point in time.
Recording and documenting the experiences and knowledge of recreational (including indigenous) and commercial fishers who have had a long-term affinity and relationship with the rivers and fisheries of coastal NSW. People’s experiences will provide a unique insight into how rivers and fisheries have changed over time assisting in the development of future research opportunities and management decisions.
A collaborative approach will be adopted with fisheries researchers, managers and expert oral historians assisting in the delivery of the program. The knowledge gained through projects such as Talking Fish will be adopted and developed further.
Wide, far reaching promotion of the program will be the key to its success. Local and state media articles and radio interviews will assist in enhancing the community’s knowledge and reaching out to potential participants. Local communities will be invited to engage and contribute to the knowledge gathering via face-to-face interviews. An interactive website will be developed to encourage participation and increased involvement. / Yes / This project concepts needs to be refined to clearly identify the end users of the knowledge and what they will do with it.
Habitat, environmental, and adaptive management to restore declining Blue Swimmer Crab fisheries. Such a project would address four objectives:
  1. Derive links between recruitment bottlenecks, catch rates and physicochemical factors;
  2. Resolve temporal and spatial patterns in habitat association and settlement of juveniles, to determine if nursery habitat availability creates localised recruitment bottlenecks;
  3. Use the above information to develop an independent measure of recruitment, to ensure future management can be linked to environmental variability to prevent fishing down of the spawning stock (as has been observed elsewhere);
  4. Apply data to recommend habitat (both structural and physicochemical) restoration measures targeted at enhancing Blue Swimmer Crab productivity.
/ Yes / Recommend consultation with WA blue swimmer crab industry and scientist.
Need to explore other jurisdictional interest in this project.
Restoring our Fisheries – the cost-benefit of restored fish habitat over current land uses. This project would address three objectives:
  1. Calculate the fisheries value from existing floodplain/estuarine habitat types under a range of climatic conditions;
  2. Carry out economic assessment of the value of existing land uses in the NSW coastal floodplains
Carry out a cost-benefit analysis comparing existing land use with restored fish habitat. / Yes / The FRAB questions whether this work has already been undertaken and whether any new information is going to add sufficient weight in convincing governments (etc) to restore fish habitat at the expense of other users.
Need to explore other jurisdictional interest in this project.