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An Inventory of Important Coastal Fisheries Habitats in South Australia

Simon Bryars

PIRSA, ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA

Theme: TH2

Any strategy aimed at the sustainable use of fisheries resources must include provisions for the protection and sustainable use of the habitats that the fisheries species rely upon for survival. Thus there is a need to know what habitats are important, where they are, and what threats they are under. A recently-completed project has addressed these issues in South Australia by creating an inventory of important coastal fisheries habitats. Fisheries habitats were defined as those habitat types that are used either directly or indirectly by commercial and recreational species. Twelve fisheries habitat types were identified: reef, surf beach, seagrass meadow, unvegetated soft bottom, sheltered beach, tidal flat, tidal creek, estuarine river, coastal lagoon, freshwater spring, mangrove forest, and saltmarsh. A fisheries habitat was deemed to be important if it was of a significant relative size and/or it was critical to the lifecycle of a species. To aid with the inventory process, a series of 'fisheries habitat areas' (FHAs) were created around the State. FHAs were defined from physical, biological, logical, and management perspectives. Important fisheries habitats were then identified, inventoried, and mapped within each of the FHAs. Information inventoried for each habitat type included fisheries values and threats. The completed inventory provides a useful and powerful tool for selecting candidate marine protected areas from a fisheries perspective.