Klaas Hartmann

University of Tasmania · Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies (IMAS)

Improvements in electronic tag technology have enhanced the ability to monitor the post-release fate of fish and estimate discard mortality rates (DM) under real-world conditions. However, correctly estimating DM requires disentangling the influence of capture-related mortality from natural (background) mortality (M), particularly when M rates are...

Determining the movement behaviours of animals is essential for understanding population dynamics. This is fundamental for developing effective spatial management strategies and in assessing the response of species to anthropogenic disturbance. This study uses a Bayesian state-space model applied to acoustic transmitter data to describe the tempora...

The genomic revolution has provided powerful insights into the biology and ecology of many non-model organisms. Genetic tools have been increasingly applied to marine lobster research in recent years and have improved our understanding of species delimitation and population connectivity. High resolution genomic markers are just beginning to be appl...

Food production is responsible for a quarter of anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions globally. Marine fisheries are typically excluded from global assessments of GHGs or are generalized based on a limited number of case studies. Here we quantify fuel inputs and GHG emissions for the global fishing fleet from 1990-2011 and compare emissions...

Australia’s lobster fisheries are relatively small in volume (9500t) compared with global production (289,000t), but are the country’s most valuable in terms of both overall production and value of export (2014 Gross Value of Production of $610 million AUD). Further, they support commercial, recreational and indigenous fishers along most of the jur...

Fuel consumption is a leading cost to fishers and the primary source of greenhouse gas emissions from the global fishing industry. Fuel performance varies substantially between and within fisheries, but the drivers behind this variation are unclear and inconsistent across studies. We surveyed rock lobster fishers in Australia and New Zealand to mea...

Substantial economic opportunities have been identified in many Australian fisheries but may remain unimplemented due to the perception that the role of government is to ensure harvests are biologically sustainable, while economic decisions should be left to the commercial industry. This paper explores the role of government in driving changes that...

Fisheries managers often face the challenge of addressing multiple, conflicting objectives. Historically, the focus has been on biological objectives but there has been an increasing appreciation of the importance of economic and social objectives. A desire to address economic objectives has partly driven the increasing use of individual transferab...

Biomass in the Octopus pallidus fishery is indicated by trends in catch per unit effort (CPUE), which decreased from 2005/06 to 2011/12. Since 2011/12, CPUE has fluctuated around 60% of the reference year. Catch is used as a proxy for fishing mortality and in 2015/16 decreased to its lowest level since 2011/12, with similar declines in fishing effo...

This research is an extension of two previous projects on SRL translocation (CRC2006/220 and CRC 2011/744), which showed that translocation of slow growing lobsters to better habitat can be used as a management tool to increase production in the fishery. It’s currently being used on a small scale to increase production in the Tasmanian fishery by 5...

Southern bluefin tuna (SBT; Thunnus maccoyii) are a popular component of the recreational large pelagic game fishery in Australia. The fishery is managed using individual fisher catch limits. Fifty-nine pop-up archival transmitting (PAT) tags were attached to individual SBT to estimate postrelease survival (PRS) rates. Fish caught on lures configur...

Fisheries management and sustainability assessment of fisheries more generally have recently expanded their scope from single-species stock assessment to ecosystem-based approaches, aiming to incorporate economic, social and local environmental impacts, while still excluding global-scale environmental impacts. In parallel, Life Cycle Assessment (LC...

Australian marine wild-capture fisheries are managed by eight separate jurisdictions. Traditionally, fishery status reports have been produced separately by most of these jurisdictions, assessing the fish stocks they manage, and reporting on the effectiveness of their fisheries management. However, the format, the type of stock status assessments,...

There has been an ongoing decrease in Octopus pallidus catch rate from 2005/06 to the lowest level in 2011/12 where it remained in 2012/13 and 2013/14. This long term trend indicates that the associated level of effort is likely to ultimately result in overfishing. In 2014/15 catch rate increased, however the associated level of effort was at or ab...

Since 2014, Chile has embarked on a process oriented to establish explicit and quantitative management objectives for exploited species. Although over 23 fish stocks being managed with explicit target and limit references points emanating from this process, these are often not linked to formal harvest control rules (HCR) and quantitative management...

Interactions between seals and midwater trawl operations in the Australian Small Pelagic Fishery are common and can be lethal. The nature of interactions and effectiveness of a seal exclusion device (SED) in mitigating lethal interactions was assessed using underwater video. Recent fishing activity and the phase of the trawl operation significantly...

Assignment problems in quota-managed fisheries are caused by spatial and temporal heterogeneity in the productivity of the stock. If the quota management system is not fully delineated (e.g. harvest rights assigned to particular areas) then fishers will compete with each other and overexploit parts of the fishery where or when the quota unit value...

The growing human population must be fed, but historic land-based systems struggle to meet expanding demand. Marine production supports some of the world's poorest people but increasingly provides for the needs of the affluent, either directly by fishing or via fodder-based feeds for marine and terrestrial farming. Here we show the expanding footpr...

Effective individual transferable quotas (ITQ) systems rebuild stocks and allow transfer of quotas to more efficient operators. This process requires functional markets for both quota sales and temporary quota leases. These markets are expected to respond to changes in economic rent from the fishery, which is influenced by stock abundance and the i...

Despite the many scientific and public discussions on the sustainability of fisheries, there are still great differences in both perception and definition of the concept. Most authors now suggest that sustainability is best defined as the ability to sustain goods and services to human society, with social and economic factors to be considered along...

To advance economic and sustainability objectives in a lobster fishery, four broadly different management policies were evaluated: minimum and maximum size limits, constant catch quotas, and quota set yearly in proportion to the previous year’s CPUE. The performance of each policy was evaluated based on its discounted economic yield, together with...

Assignment problems may remain in quota managed fisheries due to variation in the productivity of the stock across space and time. Unless fishers can agree to coordinate their fishing effort, they will compete amongst themselves and over-exploit the stock where or when the quota unit value is highest, leading to economic rent dissipation. Coordinat...

Long-term shifts in environmental conditions driven by climate change are predicted to persistently modify the distribution of a multitude of species. These range shifts can have significant effects on the functioning of ecological communities. Ocean warming along the southeast coast of Australia has seen a polewards shift in the distribution of th...

Studying the sub-lethal effects of catch-and-release (C&R) is challenging, as there are several potential sources of bias. For example, if behavioural alterations immediately after the release event are to be studied, separation of tagging effects from actual C&R effects is required, which is a challenge in the wild, particularly in marine environm...

Tens of thousands of phylogenetic trees, describing the evolutionary relationships between hundreds of thousands of taxa, are readily obtainable from various databases. From such trees inferences can be made about the underlying macroevolutionary processes, yet remarkably these processes are still poorly understood. Simple and widely used evolution...

The rapid increase in production and trade of farmed abalone products is a presumed threat to wild abalone producing industries due to downward pressure on price. This article explores the long-run relationship and price dynamics of Australian wild-harvested abalone and other abalone imported into the Japanese market within a cointegration framewor...

The national reporting framework used in the Status of key Australian fish stocks reports 2014 was developed collaboratively by fisheries scientists from around Australia. This framework uses standardised terminology and reference points for stock status classifications. Following release of the Status of key Australian fish stocks reports 2012, a...

The net movement of individuals from marine reserves (also known as no-take marine protected areas) to the remaining fishing grounds is known as spillover and is frequently used to promote reserves to fishers on the grounds that it will benefit fisheries. Here we consider how mismanaged a fishery must be before spillover from a reserve is able to p...

The legal minimum length (LML) of female Southern Rock Lobster (Jasus edwardsii) was reduced in the Tasmanian fishery in 1966 for higher sustainable catches. Originally, the LML was to be reduced in slow growth southern areas only; however, the change was implemented across the entire fishery due to lobbying by commercial fishers. The lower LML has...

Fuel inputs to fishing vessels account for a large and growing portion of fishing costs worldwide, and represent the primary source of greenhouse gas emissions for many seafood products. Efforts to measure and improve fuel consumption play a central role in ensuring the economic viability and environmental sustainability of future production. We ha...

This represents the first comprehensive study of the fishery, fisheries biology and markets for the edible periwinkle, Lunella undulata. Commercial catch and effort data, fisher knowledge, and growth and reproductive biology of periwinkles were integrated to provide a robust foundation supporting the management of the Tasmanian fishery. In addition...

In this project, (1) economic data for Tasmania were collected, and (2) a lobster fishery projection model was produced which permits the testing of a wide range of strategies, specifically to evaluate each strategy’s economic performance. (3) Using this bioeconomic model, strategies were evaluated, and the profit expected under each strategy was e...

Integrated, efficient, and global prioritization approaches are necessary to manage the ongoing loss of species and their associated function. "Evolutionary distinctness" measures a species' contribution to the total evolutionary history of its clade and is expected to capture uniquely divergent genomes and functions. Here we demonstrate how such a...

Successful individual transferable quota (ITQ) management requires a binding (constraining) total allowable catch (TAC). A non-binding TAC may result in a shift back towards open access conditions, where fishers increasingly compete (‘race’) to catch their share of the total harvest. This process was examined by comparing fishing fleet behaviour an...

Fishing for revenue: how leasing quota can be hazardous to your health. – ICES Journal of Marine Science, doi.10.1093/icesjms/fsu019. Fisheries management decisions have the potential to influence the safety of fishers by affecting how and when they fish. This implies a responsibility of government agencies to consider how fishers may behave under...

This project moved translocation from pilot scale research operations to full commercial operations. Previous research had examined a range of biological issues and concluded that translocating lobsters to areas of higher growth was a feasible option for increasing production in the Tasmanian fishery. Moving to commercial scale operations through t...

Phylogenetic trees that include all member lineages are necessary for many questions in macroevolution, biogeography and conservation. Currently, producing such trees when genetic data or phenotypic characters for some tips are missing generally involves assigning missing species to the root of their most exclusive clade, essentially grafting them...

In response to an intense social media campaign led by international conservation groups, Green politicians, and recreational fishers, the Australian government imposed a moratorium on the operations of a large factory trawler. This moratorium overrode the government's own independent fisheries management process by making amendments to its key env...

Phylogenetic diversity (PD) is an emerging tool for prioritising species in biodiversity conservation problems. PD uses the evolutionary history of a group of species to provide a formal measure of their biodiversity. This provides an objective target for biodiversity conservation, in which decisions are frequently made for political reasons or acc...

The biomass of rock lobster, Jasus edwardsii, has declined across southern Australia, including western Victoria. Environmentally driven changes in recruitment and high fishing mortality are likely the major causes for this decline although trends in natural mortality, catchability and growth cannot be excluded. Management Strategy Evaluation is us...

Biological Sustainability  Biological sustainability is measured through egg production and recruitment. Egg production declined over the last year but, at an estimated 40% of virgin production, is still at very high levels and thus well above the limit reference point of 25%. However, the level of egg production may be unrelated to future stock s...

Current global patterns of biodiversity result from processes that operate over both space and time and thus require an integrated macroecological and macroevolutionary perspective. Molecular time trees have advanced our understanding of the tempo and mode of diversification and have identified remarkable adaptive radiations across the tree of life...

Most biodiversity conservation programs are forced to prioritise species in order to allocate their funding. This paper contains a mathematical proof that provides biological support for one common approach based on phylogenetic indices. Phylogenetic trees describe the evolutionary relationships between a group of taxa. Two indices for computing th...

The control of invasive species is a major challenge to the preservation of native ecosystems, both terrestrial and aquatic. A population of the invasive common carp, Cyprinus carpio, was detected in Lakes Sorell and Crescent, Tasmania, Australia, in the mid-1990s. Early detection allowed for the containment of their population to this lacustrine s...

Understanding the mechanisms that influence the successful recruitment of marine species is one of the great challenges in marine science, particularly for species that undergo a protracted larval phase. Here we apply a bio-physical individual-based model (IBM) which couples data from a high-resolution oceanographic model with temperature-related s...

Current Stock Status Biological Sustainability  Biological sustainability is measured through egg production and recruitment. Egg production declined over the last year but is still at very high levels at an estimated 40% of virgin production and thus well above the limit reference point of 25%. The level of egg production may be unrelated to futu...

The east coast of Tasmania, and especially the Tasman Peninsula, is a particularly important region for the recreational rock lobster fishery as well as supporting commercial rock lobster fishing operations. Given recent declines in catch rates and growing competition for dwindling resources there is a need for management action to limit fishery im...