Australia’s fisheries regulator has launched a four-year push to design a climate-ready, multi-species harvest strategy for the Southern and Eastern Scalefish and Shark Fishery (SESSF), aiming to improve both sustainability and economic performance while containing the cost of managing one of the nation’s most complex fisheries.
Led by the Australian Fisheries Management Authority (AFMA) in partnership with CSIRO and supported by the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC), the project will translate years of research into a practical, cost-effective strategy tailored to the SESSF. It builds on FRDC-funded work that began in 2018 to design and test options for multi-species fisheries, using the SESSF as a test case.
Harvest strategies guide decisions such as catch limits and are designed to enable profitable commercial fishing with sustainability as the paramount priority. A core focus of the new work is aligning operational costs with the fishery’s overall economic value and risk profile — in effect, balancing risk, catch and cost to keep the fishery viable.
Operating in a globally recognised climate hotspot, the SESSF faces multiple pressures, from ecosystem change and ecological risk to economic headwinds and data gaps. AFMA and its partners say those conditions make the fishery a pioneering testbed for innovative, climate-adaptive, multi-species approaches that could be applied elsewhere.
“A key strength of this work is its broader relevance,” said Dan Corrie, AFMA’s Senior Manager of Climate Adaptation and Strategic Reform and Principal Investigator for this project. “The framework and methods we’re developing will offer adaptable harvest strategy options for other jurisdictions grappling with similar challenges – multi-species fisheries, limited data, and the growing impacts of climate change.
“While our primary deliverable is a tailored, fit-for-purpose harvest strategy for the SESSF, the process itself is designed to be transferable, enabling other regions to apply the same principles to their own fisheries.”
Corrie is working with Dr Geoff Tuck, a senior research scientist at CSIRO whose team develops harvest strategies and assesses SESSF fish stocks, alongside co-investigators from CSIRO.
An expert advisory group of AFMA fisheries managers, scientists, policy specialists and industry representatives will support the project. A steering committee of senior executives from Commonwealth and state governments, including AFMA, will oversee implementation to ensure the final strategy aligns with relevant Commonwealth policies and legislation.
AFMA will consult Resource Advisory Groups and Management Advisory Committees — the authority’s primary advisory forums — and convene workshops with researchers, industry, government and environmental NGOs. That engagement is designed to shape early concepts and the final approach, with delivery expected in late 2028.
The project, 2024-065: Development of a preferred multi-species harvest strategy in the Southern and Eastern Scalefish and Shark Fishery, is supported by funding from the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation on behalf of the Australian Government.
