Can Sawfish Bycatch Within the Northern Prawn Fishery Be Mitigated Using an Electric Field?
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Can sawfish bycatch within the Northern Prawn Fishery be mitigated using an electric field? Kátya Abrantes, Adam Barnett, Maarten Soetaert, Peter M. Kyne, Adrianne Laird, Jamie Seymour, Lyle Squire, Barbara E. Wueringer, Charlie Huveneers 2020 FRDC Project No 2016-058 © 2020 Fisheries Research and Development Corporation. All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-1-925562-36-1 Can sawfish bycatch within the NPF be mitigated using an electric field? Project No 2016-058 2020 Ownership of Intellectual property rights Unless otherwise noted, copyright (and any other intellectual property rights, if any) in this publication is owned by the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation This publication (and any information sourced from it) should be attributed to Abrantes, K., Barnett, A., Soetaert, M., Kyne, P. M., Laird, A., Seymour, J., Squire, L., Wueringer, B. E., Huveneers C., Flinders University, 2020, Can sawfish bycatch within the Northern Prawn Fishery be mitigated using an electric field? Cairns, April. CC BY 3.0 Creative Commons licence All material in this publication is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia Licence, save for content supplied by third parties, logos and the Commonwealth Coat of Arms. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Australia Licence is a standard form licence agreement that allows you to copy, distribute, transmit and adapt this publication provided you attribute the work. A summary of the licence terms is available from https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/au/. The full licence terms are available from https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/au/legalcode. Inquiries regarding the licence and any use of this document should be sent to: [email protected] Disclaimer The authors do not warrant that the information in this document is free from errors or omissions. The authors do not accept any form of liability, be it contractual, tortious, or otherwise, for the contents of this document or for any consequences arising from its use or any reliance placed upon it. The information, opinions and advice contained in this document may not relate, or be relevant, to a readers particular circumstances. Opinions expressed by the authors are the individual opinions expressed by those persons and are not necessarily those of the publisher, research provider or the FRDC. The Fisheries Research and Development Corporation plans, invests in and manages fisheries research and development throughout Australia. It is a statutory authority within the portfolio of the federal Minister for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, jointly funded by the Australian Government and the fishing industry. Researcher Contact Details FRDC Contact Details Name: Charlie Huveneers Address: 25 Geils Court Address: College of Science and Engineering Deakin ACT 2600 Flinders University, Adelaide, SA, 5042 Phone: 02 6285 0400 Phone: +61 (08) 8201 2528 Fax: 02 6285 0499 Fax: Email: [email protected] Email: [email protected] Web: www.frdc.com.au In submitting this report, the researcher has agreed to FRDC publishing this material in its edited form. ii Contents Contents ......................................................................................................................................iii Acknowledgments ....................................................................................................................... vii Executive Summary .................................................................................................................... viii Introduction ................................................................................................................................. 1 Objectives .................................................................................................................................... 4 Methods ...................................................................................................................................... 5 Animal capture and housing ..............................................................................................................5 Experimental setup ............................................................................................................................6 Treatments .........................................................................................................................................9 Data collection and analysis ............................................................................................................ 13 Results ........................................................................................................................................17 Reaction distance ............................................................................................................................ 17 Inter-approach times ...................................................................................................................... 21 Reaction type .................................................................................................................................. 23 Twitching ......................................................................................................................................... 32 Underwater video observations ..................................................................................................... 34 Discussion ...................................................................................................................................36 Conclusion ..................................................................................................................................41 Implications ................................................................................................................................42 Recommendations ......................................................................................................................42 Further development ...................................................................................................................... 42 Extension and Adoption ..............................................................................................................43 Appendices ................................................................................................................................. 44 References ...................................................................................................................................... 44 Videos.............................................................................................................................................. 50 iii Tables Table 1. Pulse parameters of the two devices on which the electrode setup used was based: Ocean Guardian Freedom7™ and Rpela. Source: Chateauminois et al. (2019). AC = alternative current; DC = direct current. ................................................................................................................................................ 9 Table 2. Pulse parameters used for each treatment. For each of the six electrified treatments, the parameter that differs from the ‘Baseline’ pulse is in bold. N is number of experiments run for sawfish 1 and 2. AC = alternating current; BC = bipolar current. ................................................................................ 10 Table 3. Ethogram showing the behaviours recorded for the quantitative analysis of sawfish reaction to the various electric fields. ........................................................................................................................... 14 Table 4. Parameters used in the quantitative analyses of sawfish behaviour in response to the different electric fields. .............................................................................................................................................. 16 Table 5. Proportion of times each behaviour was observed in response to each treatment. Colours are in a green-yellow-red scale of this proportion, calculated for each individual sawfish separately, and indicate where each treatment vs. behaviour falls within the observed range of proportions, so that red is the maximum value, dark green the lowest, and yellow is the cell with the median value. Other cells are colored proportionally, in a gradient. n = total number of approaches for each treatment; only approaches made perpendicularly to the electrode setup are included as not all reactions (e.g. swim between electrodes) could be observed from approaches towards the electrode placed in the midde of the tank (see Figure 5). The pulses most likely to not lead to capture (for each individual) are in bold. ... 30 Figures Figure 1. Maximum temperatures recorded at the City of Cairns between March 1st and October 15th 2019, showing the eight-day period of low (≤25 °C) maximum temperatures registered between the 1st and 8th June (dashed red rectangle; Bureau of Meteorology, www.bom.gov.au). Blue arrows indicate the start and end dates of the experiments, and horizontal dashed line indicates 25 °C temperature. ............ 6 Figure 2. Diagram of the electrode setup, showing the two 40 cm long electrodes attached to a 2.4 m wooden beam by fishing line and kept above the water by two floats (25 cm diameter). Electrodes are at 112 cm distance from each other, and each is connected to a 14 gauge power lead (20–23 m long) that connects to the LPG. .....................................................................................................................................