The influence of environmental factors on recruitment and availability of fish stocks in south-east Australia

摘要: It has long been suggested that there is patterns in recruitment and availability related to oceanographic factors, but there has been little support for compiling these data and incorporating them in a quantitative manner into stock assessments of fisheries in south-east Australia. Much of this information is in the heads of experienced fishers but needs to be formally (and quantitatively) incorporated into the assessments/analyses that underpin the TAC setting process for the fishery.Any examination of the influence of environmental variables on fisheries requires well formed hypotheses to test. From information passed down through generations and decades of their own experiences, good fishers have an informed understanding of the influence of environmental and oceanographic factors on fish stocks. It is clear that capturing this anecdotal information is important in the development of hypotheses of the influence of the environment on catches and catch rates, which may lead to the development of frameworks to incorporate these variables in the stock assessment process.