National Strategy for the Survival of Released Line Caught Fish: investigating survival of fish released in Australia’s tropical and subtropical line fisheries

Funded Activity Summary

The report by McLeay et al. (2002) (“National strategy for the survival of line-caught fish: a review of research and fishery information”) summarises the need for this research as follows:

“The commercial and recreational line fisheries are the most highly participatory of all Australia’s fisheries. They are managed by a complex array of regulations, including size and catch limits, which create a high potential for captured fish to be released. The growing interest of recreational and charter fishers in catch-and-release practices has also increased release rates of line-caught fish. The susceptibility of line-caught fish to post-release mortality (PRM) is largely unknown, and is not taken into account in most current stock assessments”.

Perhaps half of the fish caught by line in Australia are released, for a variety of reasons including minimum legal sizes, bag limits, catch-release philosophy etc. However, we have little idea of how many of these die as a result of hook damage, inappropriate handling, barotrauma or capture stress, nor what effect this source of ‘cryptic’ mortality will have on the long-term sustainability of the various fisheries.

While there is good information on release rates in the recreational line fishing sector there is also a need to test the supposition that the commercial sector catches few undersized fish and also establish any differences between the general recreational community and the charter sector.

To more realistically appreciate the full effect of line fishing on the various species, the released catch needs to be described and quantified, and an attempt made to estimate post-release survival (PRS) rates. Alternative capture methods (hook designs) need to be tested, to determine whether a change in apparatus (via regulation or a Code of Practice) could reduce the catch of undersized fish. Pre-release handling and barotrauma relief procedures need to be evaluated to determine whether any changes may increase survival of fish returned to the water.



Objectives:
1. To quantify the effects of hook type, hooking damage, barotrauma and barotrauma relief procedures on the short-term post-release survival (PRS) of key tropical and sub-tropical line-caught fish species.
2. To quantify the effects of hook type, hooking damage, barotrauma and barotrauma relief procedures on the long-term post-release survival (PRS) of key tropical and sub-tropical line-caught fish species.
3. To develop and extend ‘best practice’ handling procedures applicable to the recreational, commercial and charterboat sectors in Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia.

Funded Activity Details

Start Date: 30-06-2003

End Date: 29-02-2008

Funding Scheme: Funding Scheme not available

Funding Amount: $674,340.00

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

Analytics | Community | Fishing Gear | Recreational Fishing | Survey | Tagging | Wild Catch

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