5.2 Marine fisheries and biodiversity research

Mfish has a research planning process for the provision of information required to support fisheries and marine biodiversity management decisions. This process provides directions for future research needs, including medium-term research plans and short-term research proposals. Research needs are identified from a number of sources, including fisheries assessment meetings (including liaison networks), research planning meetings with stakeholders, research science providers and Mfish.

Fisheries research includes projects on estimating stock size and sustainable yields from New Zealand’s major fish stocks, determining the impacts of fishing and aquaculture on the marine environment, estimating the level of recreational harvest, socio-economic research, and investigation into Māori customary fisheries. The total budget for fisheries research for the 2003-04 year is $ 21.6 Million.

Marine biodiversity research funded by Mfish includes research on coastal and deep-sea seamount communities, the impact of terrestrial runoff on rocky reefs, coralline algae and other seaweeds, the ecology of coastal Ross Sea marine communities, genetic identification of plankton and fish, and reviewing our current understanding of the biodiversity of selected New Zealand’s marine communities. Significant projects during 2003-04 have included two major research voyages – one in the Tasman Sea funded jointly with the Australian National Oceans Office and the other in the Ross Sea, Antarctica funded jointly with Land Information New Zealand and conducted in collaboration with the Italian Antarctic research programme. A publicly accessible web-based National Aquatic Biodiversity Information System has been developed and is being tested by selected users prior to being officially launched in the first half of 2004. The total budget for marine biodiversity research for the 2003/04 year is $ 3.3 million.