Standard Talk (15 mins) Australian Society for Fish Biology Conference 2022

Queensland’s commercial shark catch: monitoring insights and catch characteristics (#134)

Lenore Litherland 1
  1. Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, Brisbane, QLD, Australia

The Queensland Government’s Sustainable Fisheries Strategy has afforded an opportunity for Fisheries Queensland to improve public understanding of the level of impact by net fisheries on shark stocks. To complement the existing routine catch monitoring (i.e. logbooks, unload reports and vessel tracking) Fisheries Queensland has implemented a biological monitoring program for sharks. Between 2018 and 2020 the focus of the program was to deliver improved catch composition data and advance our understanding of shark species interacting with net fisheries. The program's current focus expands on this work and integrates the diverse data streams that are now available, to enhance the species assemblage data and refine hotspots of fishery interaction. This presentation will provide an overview of the shark monitoring program and discuss catch characteristics for the retained and non-retained shark catch within the East Coast Inshore Fishery and the Gulf of Carpentaria Inshore Fishery.