ABARES has undertaken regular surveys of key Commonwealth fisheries since the early 1990s. The resulting data are used to assess the financial performance of operators in the fishery and the economic performance of the fishery as a whole. These performance measures act as important indicators for fishery managers (Box 1). To provide a more comprehensive assessment of fishery-level performance, ABARES expanded the former Australian Fisheries Surveys report series in 2013 to include other economic indicators that draw on data collected from the surveys. These indicators include productivity and terms of trade indexes, management costs and quota latency measures. In this report, survey-based results are presented for 2013–14 and 2014–15 and preliminary non–survey based results are presented for 2015–16 and 2016–17.

Summary vii

Key results vii

1 Introduction

2 Commonwealth Trawl Sector

Background to the sector

Key economic trends

Current management arrangements

Financial performance

Economic performance

Productivity

Terms of trade

Management costs

Quota latency

Performance against management objectives

3 Gillnet, Hook and Trap Sector

Background of the sector

Key economic trends

Current management arrangements

Financial performance

Economic performance

Productivity

Terms of trade

Management costs

Quota latency

Performance against management objectives

Appendix A: Survey definitions

Financial performance

Net economic returns

Survey-based estimation of net economic returns

Net economic returns and economic performance

Appendix B: Survey methods

Appendix C: Non–survey based estimation of net economic returns

Appendix D: Productivity and terms of trade methodology

Productivity measurement

Terms of trade measurement

Data

References