An integrated monitoring program for the Northern Prawn Fishery: Assessing the design and developing techniques to incorporate survey results into fishery assessment

An international review of the Northern Prawn Fishery tiger prawn assessment was carried out in 2001. The review drew attention to the high level of uncertainty in the assessment and recommended that the logbook data be augmented by fishery independent survey data. In response to the review, industry funded a consultancy project in 2002 to investigate and design an integrated monitoring program for the NPF. Following an industry meeting, NORMAC decided to conduct a one-year pilot survey in 2002/03. The project (FRDC 2002/101) was funded through the FRDC, and included a spawning index survey in August and a recruitment index survey in January. The success of the pilot project led to a FRDC-funded monitoring project (FRDC 2003/075) in 2003/04 and this project (FRDC 2004/099) in 2004/05. Two surveys were undertaken during the 2004/05 financial year.