The emerging Billfish fishing grounds of northern Australia: fisheries description, movements, and hot-spots

Funded Activity Summary

There is a need to increase economic growth of environmentally sustainable industries in northern Australia and this project aims to increase recreational billfish fisheries tourism and facilitate management of this emerging resource. The tourism industry in Australia including recreational fisheries and associated travel sectors have been severely impacted due to Covid-19. With an estimated economic value of $3185AUD per charter fishing trip, recreational billfish fisheries represent a high-value and sustainable option to help develop post-Covid-19 fisheries tourism in northern Australia.

There is an emerging recreational billfish fishery in Northern Territory waters but growth, participation and management of a sustainable fishery has been hampered by a lack of data and public awareness. Anecdotal evidence suggests that a recent increase in catches of sailfish and black marlin in waters off northern Australia may have been facilitated by the closure of Taiwanese Gillnet fisheries which operated in Australian waters between 1972 and 1986. However, there has been little scientific evaluation of past or current billfish fisheries resources in the region, and better quality fisheries data and information on the spatial distribution and seasonal movement patterns are required to guide development and management of sustainable fisheries. The catch-and-release billfish fisheries of northern Australia are likely to be sustainable but stocks are likely to be affected by fisheries in the broader Indo-Pacific region and further information is needed to inform assessments as part of the Status of Australian Fish Stocks Report. As is this a developing fishery there is a need to form a ground up educational programs on the best practices for responsible handling of billfish in the NT recreational fishery.

Objectives:
1. To provide a description of the emerging recreational fishery for billfishes in northern Australia, including analyses of historic and ongoing conventional tagging data, historical records of billfish larvae (1956−1981) to map spawning areas, and evaluate whether historical commercial catch data on billfishes is available from Taiwanese gillnet fisheries (1972-1986).
2. To evaluate the movement patterns and hot-spots of billfish habitat-use in emerging recreational fishing grounds of northern Australia using pop-off satellite archival tags.
3. To conduct a pilot study evaluating the feasibility of tagging billfishes with pop-off satellite archival tags,internally and externally implanted acoustic tags for long-term monitoring of billfish residency and site fidelity on fishing grounds.
4. To collect tissue samples from northern Australia for later analysis in a separate project examining the genetic population structureand trophic ecology of billfish (Sailfish and Black Marlin)
5. To engage recreational fishers in citizen science evaluation of billfish movements and increase growth and economic development of sustainable billfish fisheries in northern Australia through a top end billfish sprint and fisher education.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 10-12-2021

End Date: 28-03-2025

Funding Scheme: Funding Scheme not available

Funding Amount: $442,416.00

Funder: Fisheries Research and Development Corporation

Research Topics

ANZSRC Field of Research (FoR)

There are no FoR codes available for this funding activity

ANZSRC Socio-Economic Objective (SEO)

There are no SEO codes available for this funding activity

Other Keywords

RAC NT | Recreational Fishing

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