Giant Crab Enhanced Data Collection - Innovative approaches to enhance data collection in the Victorian, South Australian and Tasmanian Giant crab fisheries

The giant crab fishery (GCF) across southern Australia has a small tonnage of large, individually valuable animals. Despite the implementation of harvest strategies and management plans guiding the setting of conservative TACC’s, declining trends are evident across the shared Southern Australian resource. The fishery has had ongoing problems collecting quality stock assessment data, leading to uncertainty in the assessment and management. Attempts to improve the collection of fishery data over the years have been challenging and innovative data collection methods for small scale fisheries such as the GCF are required to improve the monitoring of stock status of this important commercial fishery and enhance long-term sustainability of the Giant Crab resource. This investment will develop effective, low-cost data collection protocols and assess the potential integration of fishery-independent biological data to enhance assessment of Victorian, Tasmanian and South Australian giant crab fisheries.