AFMA loves to get involved with the wider community to help people understand how Commonwealth fisheries are managed. Two fisheries managers jumped at the chance to present to fisheries management students at Southern Cross University in Coffs Harbour, along with NSW fisheries managers, on the 12 April 2016.
Students undertaking the subject learned about a range of issues in managing both commercial and non-commercial fisheries and looked at different fishery assessment, management and regulation methods.
AFMA talked to students about our role in managing Commonwealth fisheries, how total allowable catches are set and the types of management arrangements that can be used to regulate the fishing industry. Eastern school whiting was used as a case study to illustrate how quota species are assessed and managed, especially when fish are caught in both the NSW state fishery and Commonwealth Southern and Eastern Scalefish and Shark Fishery.
Students also visited the Coffs Harbour Co-op to look at boats unloading their catch and then took samples of school whiting to the lab to study their biology and gain an understanding of how this can be used to manage this species. For example, counting the rings of the fish ear bones (otoliths), which are similar to tree rings, can tell scientists the age of fish. Knowing the age of the fish can help determine out how fast they grow, how old they are when they reproduce and how long they live. This information is then put into a statistical model and the results are used to help set sustainable catch levels for each species.
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