The next one is by Dr Jaimie Cleeland who's going to talk about science supporting sustainable
Southern Ocean fisheries. Jaimie's a fisheries scientist within the Southern Ocean Ecosystem
Program that Alex presented on this morning. Her work directly supports the conservation of bycatch
species such as skates and sharks. She also has the very distinct honour of having piloted barges
at every Australian Antarctic station which is no mean feat. She's a passionate communicator
and she really embraces all of our outreach opportunities, and she lives on a sailboat.
Thank you,
thank you, alright so I thought I'd take us on a journey across some of the roughest seas in the
Southern Ocean, long past the southwest tip of Australia lies the glaciated mountain of Heard
Island. So very few have seen it, even fewer have stepped foot on its shores and experienced
its bone-chilling winds, but for our fisheries science team it's the waters around Heard Island
that cover the Kerguelen Plateau beneath, some of the most productive waters in the Southern Ocean
that inspire our scientific minds. So let's take a dive through the epipelagic zone and
the upper sunlit waters enriched with iron that promote phytoplankton growth, supporting krill,
penguins, seals and whales. Diving deeper into the mesopelagic zone we find squid
and lantern fish that seek safety here in the day but migrate towards the surface at night.
As we continue to dive deeper many of the animals we see here produce bioluminescence to attract
prey, mates or as a means of distracting from predators. Finally we reach the silty
muddy bottom of the Kerguelen Plateau. It is in this habitat that we find the prized Patagonian
toothfish and mackerel icefish which are the target of Australia's Southern Ocean fisheries.
So these fisheries initiated in 1997 have less than five vessels operating annually
which catch around 3000 tonnes of toothfish using longlines and 500 tonnes of icefish by trawling,
so that reflects a value of over a hundred million dollars to the Australian fishing industry.
But how do we as scientists ensure that this fishery is sustainable and remains
so as our planet warms and the need to feed a growing population increases? Well, our
fisheries research team does this through rigorous scientific analysis that supports a precautionary
fishing model and that takes a lot of data. So one of the exemplary features of this fishery
which contributes to its sustainability is that there has been independent scientific observers
on every voyage collecting data from every single haul since the initiation of the fishery.
This team of observers work in the most extreme conditions, they collect important biological
measurements of length and weight and maturity for both target species and the species caught
unintentionally. So for Patagonian toothfish that can be up to two metres long and 100 kilos.
Fish ear bones called otoliths are also collected. These structures reveal to our
team of technicians the age of each fish and it's this team that uncovered a 63-year-old toothfish,
so that's the oldest ever found. So to ensure ongoing sustainability means we just need to know
how many fish there are in the sea, so to do this the fishery partakes in an annual research trawl
survey so that sets an exceptional standard amongst fisheries around the world. So here
we see the abundance of multiple species on the plateau over the last 12 years from this survey.
So all of this information comes together and forms the basis of stock assessment models that
guide recommendations of the amount of fish that can be caught sustainably. So the models predict
toothfish populations 30 years into the future and although we don't just explore scenarios
for toothfish, we also do it for mackerel icefish, their populations are also monitored,
and it's not just the species of value that are the focus of our research,
I'm responsible for analysing trends in bycatch such as skates and sharks and working with
industry closely to develop better strategies and solutions to avoid impacts on these species.
So in the 25 years of doing fisheries research on the Kerguelen Plateau we've
made some epic discoveries including the flying headless chicken monster.
Thanks Dirk, and the presence of vulnerable marine ecosystems, reef gardens of hydrozoans
and sponges, home to crab-like sea spiders, polychaete worms, echinoderms and sea stars.
The Kerguelen Plateau where Heard Island lies is a place for science collaboration, so we
regularly join forces with our French neighbors at Kerguelen to deliver plateau-wide science and
our friends at the University of Tasmania to ensure our work extends beyond just fisheries
to whole-ecosystem management. So for our science to actually mean anything we need to ensure that
it makes it onto the policy stage, this is where we work with AAD policy section and International
Fisheries section here in Canberra. It is through these pathways that we take our research to the
Australian Fisheries Management Authority and to CCAMLR to enact change. So Australia's large
presence at CCAMLR means that not only do we ensure that our fishery is sustainable
but we have a say in the sustainability of all fisheries in the Southern Ocean.
So what do we have to be proud? Well there's almost zero seabird bycatch in our
sub-Antarctic fisheries which is an incredible achievement. This is not just us as scientists,
this is science and our policy team. We see that illegal fishing on the Kerguelen Plateau has been
virtually eliminated and we have provided the science to support the successful development
of Marine Protected Areas around Antarctica. But it's not over yet. As the environmental
and the policy areas and climate heat up we continue to deliver the best available
science to ensure our Southern Ocean fisheries remain sustainable into the future. Thank you.