Management Concern: High    

State of Knowledge: Low

Summary extracts from Outlook Report 2009

• Fishing provides opportunities for recreation, resources for the seafood industry, and generates regional economic value.
  
• Marine tourism extends throughout the Great Barrier Reef, but its impacts are concentrated in a few intensively managed areas.
• Increasing coastal development is resulting in the loss of both coastal habitats that support the Great Barrier Reef and connectivity between habitats.
  
• An increasing coastal population is likely to increase the economic worth of recreational activities and Reef-dependant industries.
  
• Climate related changes to the ecosystem are expected to seriously affect Reef-based industries and communities and could affect patterns of use and visitor satisfaction.

What do we know?

Relevant pages from Outlook Online include:

• Vulnerability of Great Barrier Reef fisheries to climate change
  
• Implications of climate change for fisheries
• Public understanding of threats to the Great Barrier Reef 
• Value of Great Barrier Reef commercial fisheries
• Assessment of social characteristics of Queensland's recreational fishers 
  
• Fishing catch from the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park
  
• Non-retained commercial fishing catch in 2007
• Assessment of social characteristics of Queensland's recreational fishers
• Participation in recreational fishing
  
• Fisheries: catch information
  
• Fisheries: location of operations
• East coast fin fish fishery independent review

Existing policies and management actions

• The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Zoning Plan
• Fisheries: legislative management arrangements
• Fisheries: other management tools
• Fisheries: information systems 
• Implementation of World Trade Organisation (WTO) conditions and recommendations from the latest EPBC assessment: progress by fishery
• East coast fin fish fishery independent review
• Fish spawning aggregation protection
  
• Queensland Fisheries Strategy 2009-2014 
• Queensland Fisheries policies and legislation
  
• Queensland Fisheries monitoring 
• Queensland management of commercial fisheries
  
• Queensland management of recreational fisheries 

Future management requirements

• Future management requirements in this area are being guided by ongoing assessment of emerging research outcomes and issues identified by the Great Barrier Reef Outlook Report 2009.

Defined research questions

• How will economic revenues of Reef-dependant industries be affected by climate change?
  
• What adaptation options are possible to reduce current and future predicted climate change impacts on Great Barrier Reef industries and communities?
  
• What resilience and restoration options exist to protect high-use tourism sites?

Related information

• Current Research and Monitoring