Fisheries’ research projects will be extended with new funding from the State’s Natural Resource Management (NRM) strategy.

Fisheries Minister Norman Moore said $112,000 of NRM funds would boost a research project that had already helped to increase knowledge about juvenile dhufish.

“Dhufish is a major indicator species for health of the West Coast Demersal Scalefish Fishery, so this extra funding will be important to enable more survey work to be conducted across a wider area to understand more about the likely habitats of young, small dhufish,” Mr Moore said.

“WA dhufish has benefited from management strategies to reduce the take of the endemic species, following concerns about overfishing in the West Coast Bioregion.

“By knowing more about the habitats that juvenile dhufish prefer we can monitor the recruitment success of dhufish, to provide better information to managers and commercial and recreational fishers before these fish appear in the fishery.”

Additional NRM funding of $170,000 has also been allocated to a recreational fishing aerial survey project which has already established this method as the most effective to determine the fishing patterns of recreational fishers.

The Minister said surveys had been undertaken along broad stretches of coastline and the extra funding would now enable the monitoring of recreational effort to be applied to popular regional fishing sites.

The extended project would help establish non-agency partnerships for better assessment of the recreational fishing impact.

“Researchers involved in this project have built a solid understanding of the recreational fishing patterns along Perth’s coastline, through the comparison of aerial observations with counts of anglers from cameras and interviews of anglers at beaches, jetties and groynes,” the Minister said.

“Traditional boat ramp surveys have not always picked up how high the level of beach fishing activity is in WA, which has been complex and expensive to assess in the past.”