Development of a geo-referenced fishery-dependent data collection system

Australian Abalone Fisheries typically target spatially structured stocks, often in remote areas. The nature of these fishing operations means precise recording of fishery-dependent data is challenging, and fishery independent data collection to determine stock status is cost prohibitive. Typically, we see that assessments of these fisheries are based on large reporting blocks, with imprecise data. Information on spatial structure and stock productivity, and dynamics of the fleet are typically lost. Capturing the changes in fisher behaviour and fleet dynamic are central to attribution of changes in CPUE signals to stock decline or, changed harvest strategy, or both. An electronic data collection and analysis system has been developed at the University of Tasmania, using GPS and depth/time data loggers to collect high-resolution, high-quality spatial location and effort data from abalone divers. The geo-referenced diver data are used to calculate a range of spatial performance measures for assessing the performance of the fishery at an appropriate spatial scale. Here I define the data collection, database and analytical systems developed to manage and analyse the e-data from GPS and depth/time data loggers.