Fuente: Latest UTAS News
Expuesto el: miércoles, 09 de mayo de 2012 10:24
Autor: Latest UTAS News
Asunto: Divers to carry GPS technology in world-first for abalone industry
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The Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS) at the University of Tasmania has developed new methods to collect information from commercial abalone divers that will revolutionise fishery assessments. In a world-first to be announced today at the International Abalone Symposium in Hobart, the entire Tasmanian abalone commercial dive industry will carry passive GPS data loggers to assist with sustainable management of Tasmania's most valuable fishery. The GPS-based technology is the product of research conducted at the University of Tasmania over the past five years. The high-resolution GPS data will be combined with a new harvest management framework developed specifically for abalone fisheries by the University of Tasmania. The new approach is the brainchild of Dr Craig Mundy, a research fellow at IMAS, and will focus on the Tasmanian blacklip abalone (Haliotis rubra) fishery. This is the largest wild-capture abalone fishery in the world. "Until now, researchers have used the number of fish taken per unit time on a fishing trip (known as catch per unit effort or CPUE) as a proxy for abundance in order to assess performance of abalone stocks. Although CPUE data in its current form is considered an unreliable estimate of abalone stock levels it continues to be used due to the expense involved in obtaining more accurate estimates of abundance", Dr Mundy said. "Management of abalone fisheries requires substantially different information from that which is considered normal for other types of fisheries around Australia and elsewhere." Dr Mundy said collecting information at the right spatial scale has been a major challenge to those researching the assessment of abalone fisheries and using this method goes a long way to solving the problem. "The combination of electronic data collection, spatial data methods and practical harvest management strategies in a dive fishery is the first of its kind in the world", he said. The project, supported by the Australian Government Fisheries Research and Development Corporation, will involve close partnerships among industry, the Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment, and SciElex, a local marine electronics company. Published on: 09 May 2012 5:19pm
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