Orange roughy were listed as Conservation Dependent in 2006 and AFMA formulated a Conservation Program in October 2006 to ensure that orange roughy do not become vulnerable, endangered or critically endangered. Under the Orange Roughy Conservation Program, a monitoring program has been established to assess the conservation status and potential rebuilding of orange roughy.
SETFIA is managing a $1.5M project conducted over two years to provide critical information for the Orange Roughy Conservation Program. The project involves CSIRO trialling and using a net attached Acoustic/Optical System (AOS) to estimate the biomass of Eastern Zone spawning orange roughy in 2009 and 2010. Also within the project Fishwell Pty Ltd are conducting pre-spawning surveys in 2009 and 2010 to monitor the proportion of fish that spawn each year.
This two year monitoring project addresses the high priority items identified at a research planning workshop involving industry representatives, AFMA managers and researchers that met on the 13th March 2009. A significant proportion of the project costs (vessel charter, personnel and equipment) are being covered by the sale of research quota as well as financial support from CSIRO and AFMA.
The goal of the survey work is to provide an estimate of spawning biomass from a quantitative acoustic survey of the spawning aggregation in 2010. A CSIRO developed multi-frequency Acoustic-Optical System (AOS) attached to the trawl headline will be the primary acoustic instrument. The attachment of acoustics to a trawl-net system to perform quantitative deepwater grid surveys is a new untested method. Therefore a trial in July 2009 was carried out in order to evaluate the method and to eliminate or minimize any issues which might compromise the critical 2010 survey. Two voyages by the FV Saxon Onward under charter to SETFIA have been successfully completed (Kloser, 2009). The key outcome was that the method proved to be viable. The investment of resources and effort in a trial was worthwhile as much was learnt about how best to operate the equipment on orange roughy trawlers. Refinements are now in train that will further improve system performance for the 2010 surveys
