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CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research
Past Seminars

Seminar Abstract

Value-added sampling for fishery independent surveys: don’t stop after you’re done counting and measuring*

What are the benefits of fishery independent surveys? Most fishery dependent and independent surveys at the very least count, weigh, and measure the majority of species caught, even non-targeted species. Many surveys also collect selected body structures for in-lab age determinations for selected species.

We provide examples from the Northeast Fisheries Science Center’s (NEFSC) bottom trawl survey that detail the development of at-sea sampling to elucidate age, growth, maturity, fecundity, spawning season, stomach contents, diet composition, condition, habitat types and preferences, basic oceanography, and bioenergetics for a suite of diverse species. We show how the development of new methodologies and technologies has decreased both deck-time and time in the lab for the processing of many of the samples required to provide information on the topics listed above. We also show examples of how community, diversity, and other emergent properties can be estimated with the inclusion of minimal additional information collected at-sea.

As new technologies develop to make our trawl catch processing more efficient, we assert that we can notably increase the amount of information collected from trawl surveys with little additional effort. We show that with marginally additional catch processing time on the deck, at-sea sampling can provide a significant return on the knowledge of aquatic and marine resource species, non-resource species, habitats, food webs, and the ecosystems within which they occur. Ultimately we demonstrate that the average information content derived from one station expands geometrically, while the potential uses of this information expands exponentially.

(*Authors: Dr Jason Link, Jay Burnett, Paul Kostovick, John Galbraith, & Russell Brown)

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CSIRO = Marine Laboratories Auditorium, Castray Esplanade, Hobart

For further information, or to schedule a seminar, contact:
Peter Oke, (Oceanographic seminars) CSIRO Marine Research (03) 6232 5387
Piers Dunstan, (Biological seminars) CSIRO Marine Research (03) 6232 5382
Katrina Nitschke, Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC (03) 6226 2265 & IASOS, University of Tasmania (03) 6226 2509