Draft Sea Cucumber Fishery Harvest Strategy

Key points of the draft harvest strategies are that they:

1. Identify the fishery objectives. Fishery objectives set out the direction and aspirations to achieve in the long term.  The objectives are to:

• maintain all sea cucumber species at, or returned to, a target exploitable biomass level that aims to maximise economic yield (MEY) for the fishery

while:

• minimising and mitigating high ecological risks arising from fishing related activities
• maximising profitability of the commercial harvest sector
• maintaining the social and economic benefits of the fishery to the community
• ensure fisheries management is meeting the expectation of sectors and the community.

2. Manage the performance of the fishery using key indicators

• The relative amount of fish biomass of key stock(s) will be measured against target and other reference points.
• The harvest strategy aims to achieve a target reference point (Btarg) of 60% of the exploitable biomass (for Tier 1 species).
• For key stocks, performance indicators and sustainable harvests for all sectors will be estimated from a stock assessment.

3. Sets decision rules for the commercial harvest of key species

• A change in allowable catch may be triggered if the biomass of the key species falls below the target biomass.

4. Minimise ecological risks from fishing

• If an Ecological Risk Assessment (ERA) identifies fishing impacts that are considered to generate an unacceptable level of risk to any secondary or byproduct species’ populations, a review is triggered.
• The review will investigate the reason for the increased risk, and appropriate management action will be taken to reduce the risk to an acceptable level.