Benthic Habitat Classes and Trawl Fishing Disturbance in New Zealand Waters Shallower Than 250 M
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Benthic habitat classes and trawl fishing disturbance in New Zealand waters shallower than 250 m New Zealand Aquatic Environment and Biodiversity Report No.144 S.J. Baird, J. Hewitt, B.A. Wood ISSN 1179-6480 (online) ISBN 978-0-477-10532-3 (online) January 2015 Requests for further copies should be directed to: Publications Logistics Officer Ministry for Primary Industries PO Box 2526 WELLINGTON 6140 Email: [email protected] Telephone: 0800 00 83 33 Facsimile: 04-894 0300 This publication is also available on the Ministry for Primary Industries websites at: http://www.mpi.govt.nz/news-resources/publications.aspx http://fs.fish.govt.nz go to Document library/Research reports © Crown Copyright - Ministry for Primary Industries Contents EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 1 1. INTRODUCTION 3 The study area 3 2. COASTAL BENTHIC HABITAT CLASSES 4 2.1 Introduction 4 2.2 Habitat class definitions 6 2.3 Sensitivity of the habitat to fishing disturbance 10 3. SPATIAL PATTERN OF BOTTOM-CONTACTING TRAWL FISHING ACTIVITY 11 3.1 Bottom-contact trawl data 12 3.2 Spatial distribution of trawl data 21 3.3 Trawl footprint within the study area 26 3.4 Overlap of five-year trawl footprint on habitats within 250 m 32 3.5 GIS output from the overlay of the trawl footprint and habitat classes 37 4. SUMMARY OF NON-TRAWL BOTTOM-CONTACT FISHING METHODS IN THE STUDY AREA 38 5. DISCUSSION 39 6. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 41 7. REFERENCES 42 APPENDIX 1: AREAS CLOSED TO FISHING WITHIN THE STUDY AREA 46 APPENDIX 2: MAPS SHOWING THE DISTRIBUTION OF THE DATA INPUTS FOR THE BENTHIC HABITAT DESCRIPTORS 49 APPENDIX 3: SENSITIVITY TO FISHING DISTURBANCE 53 APPENDIX 4: TRAWL FISHING DATA 102 APPENDIX 5: CELL-BASED TRAWL SUMMARIES 129 APPENDIX 6: TRAWL FOOTPRINT SUMMARY 151 APPENDIX 7: TRAWL FOOTPRINT – HABITAT OVERLAY 162 APPENDIX 8: SUMMARY OF DREDGE OYSTER AND SCALLOP EFFORT DATA WITHIN 250 M, 1 OCTOBER 2007–30 SEPTEMBER 2012 165 APPENDIX 9: SUMMARY OF DANISH SEINE EFFORT 181 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY Baird, S.J.; Hewitt, J.E.; Wood, B.A. (2015). Benthic habitat classes and trawl fishing disturbance in New Zealand waters shallower than 250 m. New Zealand Aquatic Environment and Biodiversity Report No. 144. 184 p. Habitat classifications provide tools to aid in managing the environment. Available information on the benthic habitats in New Zealand waters shallower than 250 m was used to identify 108 benthic habitat classes. The classes were defined by three main data sources used as GIS layers: the Benthic- optimised Marine Environment Classification (BOMEC) generated from modelling relevant distributions of environmental variables and groups of benthic organisms; a broad sediment type layer indicating areas of sand, mud, and gravels; and three depth zones to distinguish waters less than 50 m, 50–100 m, and 100–250 m. These habitat classes are presented on a 1 km2 grid that represents about 232 235 km2 of seafloor in the study area defined by waters shallower than 250 m around North Island, South Island, and Stewart Island. The nature of the underlying data, including the different scales at which the data were constructed and combined, means that there are very broad descriptions of these habitat classes and that they will not capture the spatial heterogeneity that is likely to exist, to varying degrees, within each one. Testing of distributions of benthic organisms from two independent sources (biodiversity research surveys and trawl surveys) showed little support for a difference in sensitivity to, or recovery from, trawling of any of the habitat classifications trialled. Operational Taxonomic Units (OTU – a standardised unit of taxonomy across both data sources) were assigned sensitivity and recoverability scores based on relevant biological traits. Both sensitivity and recoverability were expressed as number of OTU, then tested using Two-way Permanova, SIMPER analyses and generalised linear modelling. These tests all indicated a low degree of consistency in sensitivity or recoverability between the two data sources. Subsets based on the depth zone or sediment type did not have lower variability in sensitivity levels. When the benthic habitat classes were combined with the fishery management Statistical Areas to provide a more geographic-based analysis, there was evidence of difference in sensitivity values of different BOMEC classes. Analyses of the recoverability data indicated different categorisation of habitat classes according to the source of the data. These inconsistent results may result from problems of scale, the underlying data used to generate the BOMEC, the nature of the biological data from the different collection sources, or the lack of abundance data. Bottom-contact trawl data for five fishing years, 2008–2012, were summarised in terms of the number of tows and the area swept by the trawl gear to provide a means of determining how much of each habitat class had been fished. Trawl effort from two different data sources were used – one which had reported start and finish positions (Trawl Catch Effort Processing Returns) and one that had only tow start positions (Trawl Catch Effort Returns). For the former, the tow trackline was generated as a straight line between the start and finish. For the latter, tow endpoints were estimated using the bearing to the next tow and the distance measure calculated from the tow duration and the tow speed. Individual tow swept areas were generated from generic doorspread values and the tracklines and applied to a 5 × 5 km grid to provide summary statistics of the number of tows, the aggregated swept area, and the trawl contact area (footprint) by target species, year, and fisheries management Statistical Areas. The trawl effort targeted about 48 different species or species groups and similar amounts of effort were reported each year, with little overall difference in the estimated annual swept areas. The primary target species were flatfish, tarakihi, snapper, red gurnard, jack mackerel, barracouta, trevally, and John dory. The trawl footprint for each year and for all five years combined was created for all target species and overlaid on the habitat classes to get a measure of the coverage of habitat classes by trawl gear. The total five year trawl footprint contacted about 113 800 km2. Annual trawl footprints were in the range Ministry for Primary Industries Coastal Footprint 1 of 45 000–48 000 km2, and the percentage change from year to year was generally between -4.2 and 4.9% due to a peak year in 2010, mainly as a result of an increase in effort for red gurnard. About 48% of the area covered by all the habitat classes was contacted by the five year trawl footprint. About 59% of the seafloor in depths of less than 50 m and 50–100 m were contacted by the five year trawl footprint compared with 39% of the 100–250 m depth zone. The percentage of the sediment types covered by the footprint varied, with about 50–58% of the three main sediment types (sand, mud, and gravel) contacted over the five years, 31% of calcareous sand, and about 19% of calcareous gravel. Five of the largest BOMEC classes (with areas between 25 000 and 89 500 km2 within the study area) had between 30 and 64% of their total area contacted by the five year trawl footprint. Fishing effort for other bottom-contact fishing methods used within the study area are broadly summarised as the number of dredge tows for dredge oyster and shellfish fisheries by fishery-specific statistical areas and as the number of Danish seine sets by General Statistical Area. Supplementary maps, tables, and GIS outputs from the work described in this report are available on request from the Ministry of Primary Industries. 2 Coastal Footprint Ministry for Primary Industries 1. INTRODUCTION Within the New Zealand 200 n. mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and 12 n. mile Territorial Sea, trawling, shellfish dredging, and Danish seining are the main fishing methods that contact the seafloor when used to target a wide variety of commercial fish, squid, and shellfish species. Trawling is carried out throughout the EEZ in waters shallower than 1600 m, whereas shellfish dredging is confined to localised oyster and scallop beds, and Danish seines are used by a small number of fishers for discrete target fisheries. Understanding the risks posed to benthic habitats in New Zealand’s coastal zone from physical disturbance by mobile bottom-contact fishing gear, requires an understanding of: the type and range of benthic habitats; the taxa that exist in those habitats and knowledge of the biological traits that determine their chance of survival after disturbance; and the distribution of dredging and trawling in relation to the habitats. To describe and understand fishing disturbance, base information that allows measures of intensity and frequency of fishing effort, by different methods, is necessary to determine the spatial and temporal distribution of the fishing effort. The effect of the fishing effort on the underlying substrates and benthic habitats, requires information on the way in which the different fishing gears modify the environment; for example, the width of the effective bottom-contact gear components and the way in which these components contact, or dig into, the seafloor substrates. This study was designed to investigate risk to benthic habitats – through descriptions of their spatial distribution in the coastal zone; identification of key taxa or features within the habitats and ranking of their functional importance and vulnerability; and an assessment of the overlap of coastal habitats with patterns of mobile demersal fishing effort. This is reflected in the project objectives given below and the structure of this report. Although the spatial patterns of all the bottom-contacting commercial fishing methods are described, the overlap with benthic habitat classes is presented for the bottom trawl effort only.