Marine Stock Enhancement, Restocking, and Sea Ranching in Australia: Future Directions and a Synthesis of Two Decades of Research and Development

This article synthesizes information on marine and estuarine release programs in Australia and evaluates potential opportunities for stock enhancement. In Australia, the scale of restocking and stock enhancement programs in marine environments has been low compared with other countries, particularly Japan, China, and the United States. However, since the early 1990s, a number of government and industry organizations have made significant investments in research and development for the release of a variety of species to evaluate the potential of releases to increase the productivity of fisheries. The scale of these research programs has varied from releases of tens of thousands of individuals (abalone Haliotis laevigata, barramundi Lates calcarifer, and mulloway Argyrosomos japonicus), hundreds of thousands (tiger prawns Penaeus esculentus and black bream Acanthopagrus butcheri), and millions (eastern king prawn Penaeus plebejus). These programs, which have shown a strong commitment to the responsible approach to enhancement sensu (Blankenship and Leber, 1995; Lorenzen et al., 2010), have resulted in increased knowledge on the population dynamics and ecology of released species and the development of bio-economic and energetic models to better plan and evaluate releases. Currently, research is continuing in New South Wales (A. japonicus, P. plebejus), Queensland (L. calcarifer), and Western Australia (A. butcheri, H. laevigata). Furthermore, Victoria is developing a plan for releasing juveniles to enhance fisheries in estuarine and marine environments, and South Australia has developed a policy for marine and estuarine stock enhancement. Policies on stock enhancement are being considered for development in New South Wales and Western Australia. These developments in policy and the introduction of fishing license fees in some states have generated renewed interest in initiating release programs in Australia that follow the responsible approach to enhancement.