Archived page, Workshop for Dhufish and Snapper computer model.

A workshop was held on 24 September for the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC) funded project called "Development of an agent-based model to communicate the implications of recruitment variability of finfish to recreational fishers".

The computer model (known as an agent-based model) being developed in this study will help recreational fishers and fisheries scientists answer key questions about the biology and recreational fisheries for important WA demersal fish species.

Dr Alex Hesp from the Centre for Fish and Fisheries Research, School of Biological Sciences, Murdoch University spoke on aspects of the biology of West Australian Dhufish and Western Blue Groper and then described two modeling projects, Management strategy evaluation and the Agent-based model.

People attending completed a short survey and then joined in on a group discussion. Both the survey and group discussion aimed to capture fisher knowledge about the habitat preferences and movements between habitats of Dhufish and Snapper and how fishers use this knowledge when fishing.

When fully developed, users will be able to interact with the program as a virtual "fisher" who can make decisions such as when, where and how long to fish, given various information, e.g. weather, fuel prices, catch rates etc.

Alex Hesp has kindly provided a copy of the slides used during his presentation (1,485 kilobyte PDF file)

Recfishwest will arrange and publicise further similar workshops in the future.


Related Media Release:- Computer games hit fisheries management

This page prepared on 1 September 2009, updated 25 September 2009.