816 



Fishery Bulletin 100(4) 



This research is the first large-scale assessment of its 

 kind on elasmobranch bycatch. The results highlight the 

 diversity of elasmobranch bycatch in the NPF and the spe- 

 cies that are least likely to be sustainable. We have also 

 highlighted the limited information available for making 

 this assessment. However, our method was designed to 

 maximize the use of the limited information. The process 

 we have used is applicable to other fisheries and also across 

 fisheries, particularly where bycatch diversity is high. 



Acknowledgments 



We thank the commercial fishermen who took the time 

 to record their catch in logbooks and support this project. 

 The skippers and crews of the boats on which our scientific 

 observer sampled are also thanked for their cooperation and 

 patience. We also thank the Northern Prawn Fishery Man- 

 agement Advisory Committee for its support; the Northern 

 Prawn Fisheiy, Fishery Assessment Group for their partici- 

 pation in this process and feedback; C. Rose for collection of 

 the crew-member obsei-ver data; and T. Walker for valuable 

 comments on the manuscript. CSIRO Marine Research col- 

 leagues helped in many ways, M. Haywood, F Manson and J. 

 Bishop for assistance with the bioregion data and commer- 

 cial effort data. C. Burridge and W Venables for assistance 

 with the statistical analysis; S. Blaber, G. Fry, D. Milton, J. 

 Salini, J. Stevens and T. Wassenberg for constructive com- 

 ments on the manuscript. We also thank the fishing, scien- 

 tific, and electronics crew of the RV Southern Suri'eyor who 

 made the research sui-veys possible. This project was funded 

 by the Australian Fisheries Research and Development Cor- 

 poration (Project no. 96/257) and CSIRO Marine Research. 



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