A Spatial DSS for South Australia's Prawn Fisheries. Using Historic Knowledge Towards Environmental and Economical Sustainability

The Spencer Gulf Penaeid prawn fishery is an example of a sustainable fishery due to close collaboration between fishers, research and government. The fishery has undergone substantial increase in fishing efficiency due to improvement in gear, increase in crew skill, effective use of communication networks for monitoring catch, stock assessment, and for rapid response for change in harvest strategies. Spatial decision-making has reduced the fishing effort to around 60 days per year and less than 10% of the area of the Gulf is trawled, with increasing economic gain due to development of real time adaptive harvest strategies undertaken in collaboration with the fisheries industry. The reduced trawl time and fishery closures, which have been adapted, have important implications for the environment. This presentation describes the process of spatial decision-making and the utility of spatial information techniques using historic spatial data in conjunction with near real-time survey data and statistical risk assessment. The system is implemented linking an Oracle database to ArcGIS, Genstat and Splus and mobile phone technologies.