The biology and ecology of epinephilidae speciea and their implications to fisheries management

This thesis examines the biological and ecological aspects of members of the globally exploited Epinephilidae with reference to fisheries management and in particular the use of closures. The leopard coralgrouper Plectropomus leopardus is a common reef fish throughout the Indo-Pacific region and a major target of both commercial and recreational fisheries. There has been limited research on this species in the eastern Indian Ocean, where there are only two populations. An examination of the species found a number of significant biological differences to their eastern Australian con-specifics. Most noticeable was the strong size-related cue over their protogynous sex change. The lack of the typical social mechanisms regulating sex change for this family ultimately resulted on a spatially explicit pattern in spawning omission. After an assessment of a number of anthropogenic and environmental parameters, fishing pressure was found to be the likely cause behind spawning omission. Spawning was restricted to areas where fishing pressure was light (i.e. within protected areas), and fish were able to attain a size where they could become male. The strong link between spawning sites and males, coupled with historical samples of spawning fish at locations where current extensive sampling revealed none, re-affirms the hypothesis of fishing pressure causing spawning omission. Histology, underwater visual census and acoustic tracking were used to determine the spawning aggregation dynamics of leopard coralgrouper at some of these spawning sites. Results yielded interesting differences from the GBR population and a number of other epinephelids. At the Abrolhos Islands, spawning was not limited to the new moon, but also encompassed the full moon, with a distinct difference between male and female attendances at aggregation sites. Females only attended aggregations during these lunar phases, while males moved to the aggregations almost daily during the spawning season. The formation of aggregations in the morning and their cessation by the afternoon provided a major departure from almost all other examples of spawning aggregations in Epinephelidae, which are considered to undertake a dusk spawning. Acoustic telemetry of leopard coralgrouper at the Abrolhos Islands indicated the species is generally sedentary, which is consistent with the suite of epinephelids that were tracked at Ningaloo Reef. Twenty fish from six species of Epinephelidae were tracked for up to two years revealing highly sedentary, habitat attached movement patterns. There was limited movement between habitats, with channels bisecting the reef slope, providing a natural barrier to fish movement. The findings of the thesis are all discussed with reference to fisheries management and in particular spatial and temporal closures. They all provide evidence toward a common finding that management measures must take into account local species-specific biological and ecological characteristics

Separation Point Easement : baseline benthic mapping and faunal survey

The Batavia Coast Marine Centre forms part of the Separation Point Marine Precinct in Geraldton, Western Australia, a collaborative initiative between the Mid West Development Commission, Department of Fisheries, City of Geraldton and the Department of Education and Training. To service an aquaculture facility planned as part of the Batavia Coast Marine Centre, a salt water intake pipe is being constructed on the coast adjacent to the facility..

Crossmodal Attentive Skill Learner

This paper presents the Crossmodal Attentive Skill Learner (CASL), integrated with the recently-introduced Asynchronous Advantage Option-Critic (A2OC) architecture [Harb et al., 2017] to enable hierarchical reinforcement learning across multiple sensory inputs. We provide concrete examples where the approach not only improves performance in a single task, but accelerates transfer to new tasks. We demonstrate the attention mechanism anticipates and identifies useful latent features, while filtering irrelevant sensor modalities during execution. We modify the Arcade Learning Environment [Bellemare et al., 2013] to support audio queries, and conduct evaluations of crossmodal learning in the Atari 2600 game Amidar. Finally, building on the recent work of Babaeizadeh et al. [2017], we open-source a fast hybrid CPU-GPU implementation of CASL.Comment: International Conference on Autonomous Agents and Multiagent Systems (AAMAS) 2018, NIPS 2017 Deep Reinforcement Learning Symposiu

Development of an individual-based tag recapture model to benchmark biomass and harvest rates in an iconic lobster fishery

The West Coast Rock Lobster Managed Fishery (WCRLMF) moved from input to output controls in 2010. This change affected the relativity of fishery-based data sources (e.g., catch rates and landed size composition), making the assessment of the fishery problematic. A novel examination of the stock dynamics was required to ensure the robustness of the stock assessment and associated management arrangements. This study derived estimates of current biomass levels and harvest rates from the release of over 60,000 tagged western rock lobsters (Panulirus cygnus). A Brownie tag-recapture (BTR) model was initially implemented to provide an assessment on a fishery-wide basis. Estimates from this were compared to those derived from a novel purpose-built tag-recapture individual-based model (IBM) that accounted for sex, size, month, and location-specific changes in catchability. The two models produced similar estimates on a fishery-wide scale—harvest rate (HR 0.26 vs 0.30, respectively) and legal-sized biomass (about 24,500 vs 20,735 t, respectively)—while the IBM also provided estimates on a far finer spatial and temporal scale. Both models indicate that the WCRLMF is currently in a very sustainable condition and is being fished at a rate below maximum economic yield (HRmey is about 0.39). These findings were in concert with estimates derived for this fishery based on two separate catch-rate based population models, an integrated population model and a biomass-dynamics model. Such strong agreement among all models provides great certainty in the current assessment and management of this important marine resource

Assessing possible environmental causes behind the reduced colonisation of western rock lobster puerulus collectors by a wide suite of species. FRDC report : project 2008/085

Objectives 1) Begin monitoring the community composition of marine flora and fauna along the Western Australian coastline during this current poor settlement period. 2) Develop standard methodology for monitoring the spatial and temporal variability in the settlement of marine flora and fauna. 3) Determine what environmental parameters may be linked to the majority of variation in the floral and faunal communities colonizing puerulus collectors, focusing on those relating to puerulus settlement. 4) Identify indicator marine flora and fauna species for monitoring the influences of environmental change on Western Australian marine environment. 5) Detect any known or potential introduced marine pests within the Western Australian environment

Summary of the West Coast Rock Lobster Managed Fishery science and modelling review

An independent peer review of the science and modelling associated with the West Coast Rock Lobster Managed Fishery was undertaken in May/June 2018. The impetus behind this review was two-fold, i) to address industry concerns that stock assessment modelling was not reflecting what was being experienced by fishers on-water, and ii) to increase stakeholders understanding of, and confidence in, the stock assessment process while ensuring that the process was commensurate with contemporary scientific practices

Stock Assessment for the West Coast Rock Lobster Fishery

The recreational component of the western rock lobster fishery is managed under fisheries regulations that impose a mix of input and output controls on individual recreational fishers. These arrangements are designed to complement the management plan for the commercial fisher

Resource Assessment Report Western Rock Lobster Environmental Resources of Western Australia

This document presents information for the Western Rock Lobster Fishery for MSC re-certification process in 2017

Effectiveness of mitigation measures to reduce interactions between commercial fishing gear and whales

Effectiveness of mitigation measures to reduce interactions between commercial fishing gear and whales. Objectives: 1. Start to collect additional information required to determine the spatial and temporal extent of migrating whales and how this overlaps with commercial fishing gear. 2. Examine the effectiveness of potential gear modifications to the float rigs of fishing pots/traps to reduce their likelihood of entangling whales