Queensland Sea Cucumber Fishery (East Coast) Level 1 Ecological Risk Assessment

Abstract

The Queensland Ecological Risk Assessment Guideline (the Guideline) was released in March 2018 as part of the Queensland Sustainable Fisheries Strategy 2017–2027. This Guideline provides an overview of the strategies being employed to develop Ecological Risk Assessments (ERAs) for Queensland’s fisheries. The Guideline describes a four-stage framework consisting of a Scoping Study; a Level 1, whole-of-fishery qualitative assessment; a Level 2, species-specific semi-quantitative or low-data quantitative assessment; and a Level 3 quantitative assessment (if applicable).
The aim of the Level 1 ERA is to produce a broad risk profile for each fishery using a qualitative ERA method described by Astles et al. (2006). The method considers a range of factors including the current fishing environment (e.g., current catch, effort and licensing trends), limitations of the current management arrangements (e.g., transfer of effort to already saturated markets, substantial increases in fishing mortality for key species, changing target species), and life-history constraints of the species being assessed. In the Queensland Sea Cucumber Fishery (QSCF), the Level 1 ERA assessed fishing-related risks in 15 ecological components including target & byproduct species, bycatch, marine turtles, sea snakes, crocodiles, dugongs, cetaceans, protected teleosts, batoids, sharks, syngnathids, seabirds, terrestrial mammals, marine habitats and ecosystem processes.

Based on the outputs of the Level 1 ERA, the progression of the fishery to a finer-scale Level 2 ERA is not considered a priority at present. As the Level 1 ERA pre-dates significant reforms to the management of the QSCF, many areas of risk identified in the assessment are currently being addressed under the Sea Cucumber Harvest Strategy which was implemented on 1 September 2021. Future assessments will consider these reforms, and the progression of the fishery to a finer-scale Level 2 ERA will be contingent on the availability of species-specific life-history data.