For the last fifty years advances in fishing technologies have allowed sonar equipped, refrigerated trawlers to take full advantage of the world’s oceans, and enabled fishers to respond to the growing global demand for fish products. It is true that overfishing is the biggest threat to the survival of oceanic fisheries. An innovative Australian method for assessing the environmental impact on marine fisheries is now being utilised to manage many commercial fishing operations across the globe.
This method is better called the ‘ecological risk assessment’ or ERA method and was developed in research led by Dr Alistair Hobday and Dr Tony Smith of the CSIRO Wealth from Oceans Flagship in association with the Australian Fisheries Management Authority. Commenting on this Dr Hobday explains how the ecological risk assessment method is being applied to simple forms of fishing from the hand-selection of rock lobsters on a coral reef, to large commercial deep water trawling operations.
