Monitoring Overview

Our clubs and members love fishing! Fishing involves the capture of fish and by monitoring what we catch we can actively support and participate in the management of our fishery resources that aligns with one of our organisation’s core values: Conservation.

ANSA QLD supports clubs in development and implementation of recreational fishery monitoring plans, which set out the objectives of a monitoring program. these plans are valuable in helping to focusing on what these program are trying to achieve. There are several key questions that these plans cover in order to facilitate successful monitoring program implementation;

  • Why are you monitoring?
  • What do you plan to monitor?
  • How do you plan to monitor?
  • What do you plan to achieve by monitoring?
  • How do you plan to use the information from monitoring?
  • Who else will be involved with the monitoring?

Depending on objectives monitoring programs can be used to complement other research and monitoring activities being carried out by like-minded groups, organisations and local, state or federal government bodies.

ANSA Qld Monitoring Program

Establishing a monitoring program allows ANSA Qld affiliated clubs and their members the ability to better understand and keep track of the health of the fishery in their own back yard. It can be used for but is not limited to the monitoring of things such as,

  • the success of a restocking program
  • survival rates, growth patterns or movement characteristics of a particular fish species
  • the general health or potential recovery of a particular area (i.e. – declared net free areas)
  • any number of other objectives a club and its members feel is important within their area

An ANSA Qld monitoring program comprises of three core parts,

  1. A monitoring plan
  2. Fish capture data collection and entry; and
  3. Fish capture data  reporting

 

Why do we need a monitoring plans?

ANSA Qld and our members have limited resources (money and time) to contribute to monitoring, so we need to make sure we are doing it for good reasons.

The plan is simply to help clubs and members think about why and where they want to direct efforts. We should make sure that we are contributing to highest priority issues, not just tagging as many fish as we can. For this reason the ANSA Qld executive committee will seek input from Fisheries Queensland and other research institutions into highest priority species and locations to help refine monitoring effort.

It also demonstrates to others that we are professional in our approach to monitoring.

How is the revised ANSA Qld tagging program different to what we have previously done under Suntag?

Tagging will be conducted according to the AUSTAG Manual (https://www.ansaqld.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Austag-Manual-Complete-with-Work-Instructions.pdf ) noting that the manual will be updated during 2016-17. Specific revisions include:

  • ANSA QLD Tagging is now the name of our state program for Queensland
  • Tagging data is added directly by members who tag as part of the fish capture form. Any field sheets used reflect fields in this web-form.
  • Tags use the web address ansaqld.org.au instead of a phone number for submission of recaptured fish information.
  • Tag and recapture information is generated online at ansaqld.org.au and replaces letters and certificates. Recapture certificates will be emailed to anglers in the future when an automated facility for this function is developed
  • Records are maintained on ANSA QLD server using MySQL database. Database is regularly backed up.
  • Recreational Fishery Monitoring Plans are required for all ANSA QLD Research and Tagging projects. These documents provide detail on target species and other project related matters
  • Tag purchase is currently through Floytag. ANSA QLD reserves the right to select any supplier based on access, price and customer service.
  • Tag Register and Audit will be maintained on ANSA QLD server using MySQL database. Database is regularly backed up.
  • Location of fish will be recorded using Queensland Government Logbook Maps (https://www.business.qld.gov.au/industry/fisheries/commercial-fishing/monitoring-and-reporting/reporting-commercial-fishers/queensland-logbook-maps )
  • Fishes of Australia (http://fishesofaustralia.net.au/ ) is used to identify fish species