2016 SoE Marine Chapter - Effectiveness of Management - Commercial fishing

The Marine chapter of the 2016 State of the Environment (SoE) report incorporates multiple expert templates developed from streams of marine data. This metadata record describes the Expert Assessment "Effectiveness of marine management of commercial fishing". The full Expert Assessment, including figures and tables (where provided), is attached to this record. Where available, the Data Stream(s) used to generate this Expert Assessment are accessible through the "On-line Resources" section of this record.

DESCRIPTION OF THE PRESSURE BEING MANAGED, AND ITS IMPACT
Ecologically Sustainable Development (ESD) is a common objective across all Australian jurisdictions resulting in a good level of understanding of the direct pressures commercial fishing has on the marine environment. All Australian jurisdictions have introduced one or more measures to address those pressures that are increasingly based on risk assessment and implementing a management response.  These include harvest strategies for the main commercial species, adaptive management involving expert judgement, more quantitative management strategy evaluation, ecosystem modelling and broader ecological risk assessments.
There is now a greater understanding of the effects of climate change and ocean acidification on the marine environment and the need to consider this when determining appropriate fisheries management responses. However, management agencies are yet to integrate all the available science into their management systems.
Likewise, current habitat analysis work will identify the emerging priorities in managing the environmental effects on habitats of commercial fishing. Spatial management has been introduced to mitigate the impacts on both vulnerable species and habitats where identified i.e. gulper shark closures in the Southern and Eastern Scalefish and Shark Fishery and the introduction of gillnet zoning closures to limit interactions with the Australian sea lion. Similarly, spatial closures that specifically prohibit trawling within seagrass and other sensitive nursery habitats are often used for many fisheries including, for example, the Shark Bay and Exmouth Gulf prawn trawl fisheries in Western Australia.
Specific mitigation measures for protected species are also used to reduce the effects of commercial fishing. This includes such things as: seal and turtle excluder devices, square mesh panels in trawls, tori lines and other sea bird deterrent devices. Education programs for the fishing industry have also been improved to provide a greater understanding of how to avoid and/or handle protected species. 
DATA STREAM(S) USED IN EXPERT ASSESSMENT
The assessment is based on relevant literature and reports on current management measures associated with commercial fishing – a list is provided in the attached Expert Assessment.
2016 SOE ASSESSMENT SUMMARY [see attached Expert Assessment for full details]
• Understanding of pressure: Understanding of fisheries and effective management frameworks is reasonably high and improving.
• Planning associated with management of pressure: Improved planning processes directed towards research and risk-based assessment processes are resulting in more robust outcomes.
• Input for informing management of pressure: Greater use of technology for data collection informs management decisions and measures the trajectory of trends over time.
• Processes associated with developing, monitoring, and updating management: Improved processes have been developed to expand the range of fishery assessment tools with an increased use of risk-based approaches. 
• Outputs from management framework in place: Biennial State of key Australian Fish Stocks Report form the primary assessment  output for national commercial fisheries.
• Outcomes of management framework in place: Improvements in data gathering and reporting direct resources towards commercial fishing operations that pose the highest risk to the marine environment.
CHANGES SINCE 2011 SOE ASSESSMENT
The Status of Key Australian Fish Stocks reports (2012, 2014) have been published providing for more comprehensive assessments of stocks across jurisdictions. Commercial, recreational and traditional fishing were assessed under the one assessment in 2011. Due to the differing impacts, differing jurisdictional coverage and differing management frameworks for commercial, recreational and traditional fishing they have been separated in the 2016 report.

Tags: commercial fishing, environmental management, expert assessment
Organization: Australian Ocean Data Network