Lead Agency: Tasmanian Commercial Divers Association (TCDA)
End Date: 31 May 2021
Status: Complete
Aims and Objectives:
- Remove all sizes of Centro from Babel Island.
- Remove Centro within roe season for processing, or use urchin waste for waste processing machine.
- Trial the feasibility of mother boats/ live tanking in the urchin industry.
- Provide urchin to IMAS for sampling.
Update 23/06/21
The Babel Island (all-sized commercial harvest trial of Longspined Sea Urchin) project was recently completed by the Tasmanian Commercial Dive Association.
The all-sized commercial harvest trial of Long Spined Sea Urchin (Centrostephanus rodgersii) was completed by two dive teams, which covered a significant portion of Babel Cat and Stonehouse Islands. 3,444kg of Centrostephanus rodgersii were removed from around 7,500 meters of coastline over 40 hours of diving.
The project achieved three major outcomes, (i) removal of Centro from babel group of Islands, (ii) size, depth, distribution and density analysis of Centrostephanus rodgersii on the Babel group, and (iii) collected information on the storage of sea urchin on multi-day fishing trips that can be used to improve and evolve harvest techniques.
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