Commercial fishers and scientists working together to support sustainable fishing

NSW DPI Fisheries has designed an on-board monitoring program to track how much fish is being  discarded by line fishers in the line fishing sector in the NSW Ocean Trap and Line (OTL) fishery. The monitoring program also measures interactions with threatened species.

The program uses trained scientific observers who collect operational, catch and wildlife abundance/ interaction data while on the boat with commercial fishers.The program has monitored more than 275 fishing trips in northern NSW (Swansea to Brunswick Heads) with the assistance of commercial fishers.

Preliminary findings show that the OTL fishery is highly selective with low levels of bycatch, and that interactions with threatened and species are very rare.

Data collected from the program will address key knowledge gaps outlined in the NSW Marine Estate Threat and Risk Assessment (https://www.marine.nsw.gov.au/marine-estate-programs/threat-and-risk-assessment), and will also be combined with data from Commonwealth, State and Northern Territory fisheries to provide a comprehensive picture of seabird interactions across Australian fisheries (https://www.agriculture.gov.au/fisheries/environment/bycatch/seabirds).

This research was funded by the NSW Government under the Marine Estate Management Strategy. The ten-year Strategy was developed by the NSW Marine Estate Management Authority to coordinate the management of the marine estate.

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