T. P. Lynch

The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation | CSIRO · Division of Marine and Atmospheric Research

Multi-decadal datasets for endangered species that track both populations and performance of management interventions are rare. One such dataset is for the critically endangered Spotted handfish, a species which has been used as a conservation model for the most endangered of the marine bony fish families the Brachionichthyidae. We assessed a 23-ye...

Effective prioritisation of research and conservation action for threatened species requires understanding the relative importance of the various pressures they face. This can be difficult for rare, cryptic, and data-deficient species, particularly when drivers of population decline are complex and indirectly impact one another. We developed a risk...

Recreational fishing (RF) is a popular pastime resulting in substantial fish mortality in many regions. Yet inclusion of RF in fishery harvest strategies is limited, because the sector's objectives are poorly understood, as are the data required to track their performance. To address this, we reviewed RF data sources available from a region of glob...

Very high-resolution (VHR) satellite sensors can be used to estimate the size of animal populations, a critical factor in wildlife management, and acquire animal spatial distributions in an economical, easy, and precise way. We developed a method for satellite population size estimation that includes a noninvasive photogrammetry, from which the ani...

Determining the genetic diversity and differentiation among populations is a critical element of conservation biology, but for many aquatic, data-deficient species with small population sizes, this is not possible. Closely related species may therefore provide a model. For the first time, using over 4000 single-nucleotide polymorphism loci, we char...

Handfishes are small, benthic marine fishes found only in south-eastern Australia. Half of the 14 known species are categorized as threatened (facing a high risk of extinction) on the International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species. Of the remaining species, five are considered Data Deficient, one is listed as Extinc...

When monitoring marine recreational fishers at sub-bio-regional scales-for example those who are accessing a Marine Park-on-site sampling is often required. This poses various logistical challenges, such as the efficient timing of intercept interviews. Here, we examine these challenges, combining trail cameras, closed-circuit television (CCTV), wea...

Marine species live out-of-sight, consequently geographic range, population size and long-term trends are extremely difficult to characterise for accurate conservation status assessments. Detection challenges have precluded listing of marine bony fishes as Extinct on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, until now (Mar...

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Recreational fisheries are complex at many levels. One specific area of complexity is reporting on various components of the sector. Alongside state-wide surveys of the general shore and boat-based recreational fishery, two other components, the charter boat (tour operator) fishery and the tournament game fishery are assessed thro...

Review of charter boat fishing in WA and NSW (Australia) and interactions with Australian Marine Parks

Recreational fisheries are complex at many levels. One specific area of complexity is reporting on various components of the sector. Alongside state-wide surveys of the general shore and boat-based recreational fishery, two other components, the charter boat (tour operator) fishery and the tournament game fishery are assessed through logbook return...

Handfish population dynamics, captive breeding and genetics as well as modelling of environmentally sustainable moorings

We have completed and analysed performance assessment surveys at nine local population sites for spotted handfish in the Derwent estuary from 2015-2019. To this time series we have also incorporated historic data for individual sites back to 1998. Local populations generally show stability of occurrence but with some difference in abundance (as mea...

Recreational fishing is popular in Australia and is managed by individual states in consultation with the Commonwealth for those fisheries that they regulate and also for Australian Marine Parks (AMPs). Fishers regularly access both state and offshore Commonwealth waters but this offshore component of the recreational fishery is poorly understood....

The critically endangered spotted handfish (Brachionichthys hirsutus) is restricted to a limited number of locations in south-eastern Tasmania, Australia. As is often the case for rare species, conducting statistically adequate surveys for B. hirsutus can be costly and time consuming due to the low probability of encountering individuals. For the f...

Collecting data on unlicensed open‐access coastal activities, such as some types of recreational fishing, has often relied on telephone interviews selected from landline directories. However, this approach is becoming obsolete due to changes in communication technology such as a switch to unlisted mobile phones. Other methods, such as boat ramp int...

A robust scientific conclusion is the result of a rigorous scientific process. In observational ecology, this process involves making inferences about a population from a sample. The sample is crucial, and is the result of implementing a survey design. A good survey design ensures that the data from the survey is capable of answering the research q...

Spotted handfish are a critically endangered species with limited data available to track their conservation trajectory. In 2016 we completed a second meta-population scale survey of all known local populations of spotted handfish within the Derwent Estuary and conducted exploratory surveys in the D’Entrecasteaux Channel. We also consolidated all h...

Successful marine management relies on understanding patterns of human use. However, obtaining data can be difficult and expensive given the widespread and variable nature of activities conducted. Remote camera systems are increasingly used to overcome cost limitations of conventional labour-intensive methods. Still, most systems face trade-offs be...

Obtaining accurate and representative demographic metrics for animal populations is critical to many aspects of wildlife monitoring and management. However, at remote animal colonies, metrics derived from sequential counts or other continuous monitoring are often subject to logistical, weather and disturbance challenges. The development of remote c...

Sustained observations allow for the tracking of change in oceanography and ecosystems, however, these are rare, particularly for the Southern Hemisphere. To address this in part, the Australian Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) implemented a network of nine National Reference Stations (NRS). The network builds on one long-term location, wh...

Recreational fishing is a popular sport and social activity in Australia with over 3.3 million participants catching 72 million finfish and contributing $1.8 billion to the economy annually in 2000/01. Since this time, there has been little coordinated research on recreational fishing and relatively little research funding. In recent years however,...

Obtaining comprehensive data from remote animal colonies is particularly difficult, with field-based monitoring subject to resource, logistical and disturbance challenges and traditional remote camera technologies' limitations in spatial and temporal resolution and/or sample sizes. To overcome these hurdles we have adapted a land-based high-resolut...

The National Reference Station (NRS) network, part of Australia’s Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS), is designed to provide the baseline multi-decadal time series required to understand how large-scale, long-term change and variability in the global ocean are affecting Australia’s coastal ocean ecosystems. High temporal resolution observati...

Between 2001 and 2009, 26 marine-protected areas (MPA) were established on the east Australian seaboard, at least in part, to manage human interactions with a critically endangered population of grey nurse shark, Carcharias taurus. This network is spread across six MPA systems and includes all 19 sites outlined in the National Recovery Plan for C....

Baited remote underwater video stations (BRUVS) are increasingly being used to examine assemblages of fishes, yet critical methodological questions related to sampling limitations and bias, such as the influence of bait type, remain poorly understood. At multiple locations, we examined the hypothesis that diversity and abundance in temperate reef f...

Recreational fishing is commonly allowed in some areas of multiple-use marine parks but little is known about how fishing effort varies over time. To examine inter-annual and spatial variability, a time-series (1999–2009) of fishing effort was collected at the Jervis Bay Marine Park (JBMP) (Australia). Compared to a previous baseline (1989–1990), e...

The National Reference Station (NRS) network, part of Australia's Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS), is designed to provide the baseline multi decadal time series required to understand how large-scale, long-term change and variability in the global ocean are affecting Australia's coastal ocean ecosystems. High temporal resolution observati...

The National Reference Station (NRS) network, part of Australia's Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS), is designed to provide the baseline multi decadal time series required to understand how large-scale, long-term change and variability in the global ocean are affecting Australia's coastal ocean ecosystems. High temporal resolution observati...

The CSIRO section that produces oceanographic moorings has undergone considerable growth in recent years. Moorings are designed, built and deployed by Ocean Sensor Deployment (OSD), which is composed of three teams, Deepwater, Coastal and Western Australia. Team members and facilities are located in Hobart in Tasmania, Perth in Western Australia an...

The scope of Australia's National Reference Stations has been progressively expanded with funding from the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS). From the original three sites around the Australian coastline a further six sites have now been established and instrumented. Besides the deployment of sensors there has been an expansion of the origi...

The CSIRO, Bureau of Meteorology, University of Tasmania, and Antarctic Climate and Ecosystems CRC operate the Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS) Southern Ocean Time Series (SOTS) facility with funding from the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS)- a set of moorings designed to quantify physical, chemical, and biol...

An iridium based telemetry system has been developed and successfully deployed both in the Southern Ocean and for over a year at a coastal station. The major technological development for the system was the encasement of the antennas into a sealed unit with transmission achieved through a thick Delrin® lid. Reliable communications can now be obtain...

Measuring the surface mixed layer of the Southern Ocean is technically difficult due to the extreme weather conditions. A novel mooring with a surface expression has recently achieved engineering success in this harsh environment over a 6-month deployment. The mooring was the result of numerous prototypes and utilises a mixed design which includes...

As part of a broader Integrated Marine Observing System (IMOS), the marine community in Australia is developing a National Reference Station (NRS) network to monitor coastal processes. IMOS is an Australian Government initiative established under the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS). The aim of NCRIS is to provide res...

Executive Summary Surveys of fish, invertebrates and algae were conducted on subtidal rocky reefs within the Batemans Marine Park (BMP) in December 2005 (11 sites), 2006 (25 sites) and 2007 (22 sites). At the time of the 2005 and 2006 surveys, the BMP had been created but legislation to implement the zoning scheme and hence enforce fishing restrict...

The most northern Australian haul-out site for the fur seal Arctocephalus pusillus doriferus is at Steamers Head, New South Wales (NSW). This study represents the first quantitative status report on the composition and abundance of seals at the Steamers Head haul-out and can be used as a baseline for future long term monitoring. Seasonal trends, en...

Several techniques were trialed for monitoring the newly-established fur seal haul-out site at Steamers Head, NSW. In order to minimise our impact, we also monitored for any disturbance to seals from our sampling. The site is unusual as while it can only be observed by boat seals perch on a steep collection of ledges, which means that regardless of...

We used a novel mid-water baited remote underwater video (BRUV) technique to sur- vey pelagic and mid-water fish assemblages at Lord Howe Island Marine Park, off eastern Australia (31.5° S, 159.1° E). We found differences in assemblages among regions separated on a scale of ~10s of kilometres. Of the environmental variables measured in the present...

Baited remote underwater video stations (BRUVS) were used to examine variation in assemblages of reef fishes at scales of 100s of kilometres (between 3 marine parks in New South Wales, Australia) and kilometres (between 4 sites within each park). Temporal variation over 5 yr was also examined in 1 park (Solitary Islands). BRUVS were able to sample...

Planners of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) commonly use maps of habitat types when choosing areas to conserve. This assumes that habitats are homogeneous, and therefore, that any area of habitat will represent the full spectrum of ecological diversity within that habitat. Here, we report that macrobenthic assemblages in tidal flat habitats were spat...

Dolphins are social animals that inhabit an opaque environment where visual cues are often limited, thus acoustic signals play an important role in inter‐ and intragroup communication. Phonations may be used to signal conspecifics, in navigation, or in the detection of prey, and may vary with behavior, environmental conditions, or geographic locati...

Theoretical models of marine protected areas (MPAs) that explore benefits to fisheries or biodiversity conservation often assume a dynamic pool of fishing effort. For instance, effort is homogenously distributed over areas from which subsets of reserves are chosen. I tested this and other model assumptions with a case study of the multiple-use Jerv...

Powerboats are potentially a significant source of disturbance to coastal cetaceans. Information is scarce, however, on the nature of interactions between powerboats and dolphins, particularly when both surface and acoustic behaviour are combined. The surface behaviour and acoustic response of travelling dolphins to approaches by a powerboat were a...

Between 2001 and 2003, we undertook 137 boat surveys for White-bellied Sea-Eagles, to investigate the abundance and distribution in Jervis Bay, New South Wales, Australia. Adult sighting rates differed between years, being highest in 2003, and both adult and sub-adult Sea-Eagle numbers differed between seasons. High sighting rates of sub- adults ea...

The white abalone (Haliotis sorenseni) was fished to near extinction during the 1970’s and 1980’s, leading to its listing in 2001 by the U.S. Federal Government as an endangered species under the Endangered Species Act (ESA). The white abalone is the first marine invertebrate to be declared an endangered species under the ESA. For studies of endang...

The New South Wales State Government (Australia) gazetted the Jervis Bay Marine Park (JBMP) in 1998. During the preparation of the draft zoning plan in 2000, societal data on two conflicting park user groups--recreational scuba divers and fishers (anglers)--was collected. While conflict resolution was a plan priority, other factors, such as cumulat...