Management strategies for an input controlled fishery based on the capture of short-lived tropical species: the example of Australia’s Northern Prawn Fishery

Abstract

The NPF is one of the Australian Commonwealth’s most valuable fisheries. The species groups targeted include tiger, banana and endeavour prawns. The fishery is managed using input controls and, from 2001 until 2004 (the period which spans this study), the agreed target was for the level of fishing effort expended to lead to a 70% chance (or greater) that the spawning stock size of tiger prawns was at or above that corresponding to Maximum Sustainable Yield, SMSY. A key issue in the management of this fishery is that the efficiency of fishing effort is continually increasing so that past effort reductions have been fully offset by improved efficiencies. In fact, some past effort reductions did not actually lead to a real reduction in effective effort. As a consequence of this, there was no recovery in the size of the tiger prawn resource but rather, in some years, a decline, until a major effort reduction program was implemented in 2001.