CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research
Past Seminars

Pelagic fisheries and ecosystems research in CSIRO Marine Research - what is it all about

Alternative title : Why a group of CSIRO staff get so excited about sushi, satellite tags, seabirds, sharks, spatial dynamics, sustainability, management strategies and uncertainty).

CSIRO Marine Research has recently undertaken a significant review of its research portfolio, and developed a Strategy for Focus and Growth. From this, five focus areas were identified, and nine new research groups formed. Within the Sustainable Fisheries Focus Area, we have a group specialising in research into Pelagic Fisheries and Ecosystems. This multidisciplinary group seeks to provide the scientific understanding that underpins the sustainable management of pelagic fisheries and related ecosystems, within Australia's EEZ and adjacent oceans.

This seminar is aimed at providing an introduction to the group, including an overview of our research interests,goals for the next five years, and our philosophy for integrating work across our disciplines. Sounds pretty dry and boring? Wondering why you should come along to a seminar late on a Friday afternoon, apart from the beer and free sashimi offered to every attendee?

We hope the answer lies in the fact that we’re very keen on increasing science interaction and collaboration, within the division and the broader community. By telling you what we’re up to, and why it’s so interesting, we hope to get at least some of you enthused. So by way of a quick biography: We work in open ocean and coastal systems; we use instruments that sample environments from tropical to sub-Antarctic and want to continue to develop new tools facilitating cutting edge science; we need to know more about the physical environments in which our animals live so we can explore the links between physics and fish; on the basis of our current understanding, we suspect that climate change will impact very significantly on many open ocean pelagic fishes and fisheries, and thus we want to develop predictive models for these impacts; like many applied science
groups, we want to improve understanding of the relationship between data characteristics (type and quality), assessment methods (e.g. model structure and complexity), reliability of uncertainty quantification, and the management advice we provide.