Chairs | Jessica Tout-Lyon and Meaghan Duncan

It has been eight years since our ‘Incredible Women in Ichthyology’ session, where we aimed to be more inclusive of gender diversity in fish and fisheries research. Here we aim to broaden our focus beyond gender to embrace inclusivity across age, culture, ethnicity, and more.

Our invited speaker Rachael Robertson will open with 'Leading on the Edge' ... where she will reflect on learnings from how she led and inspired her team through the long, tough Antarctic year.

Chairs | Rowan Chick, Malcolm Haddon, Nick Giles and Ashley Fowler

This session optimistically seeks to do too much… (typical). A lot of research and development has been prioritised at national and state/territory levels to support harvest strategies and stock assessments. (Link here and here.) Good practices for their development and application are an important and growing need as their scope has evolved.

Firstly, we seek to understand and share how harvest strategies are developing in Australia in light of learned experience, current research and growing stakeholder engagement, awareness and expectation. What are good practices and what are impediments and solutions to their improved development, understanding and uptake?

Secondly, the session seeks to provoke discussion, understanding and need for the application of good practices in stock assessment in a cost-recovery environment. Stock assessment outputs underpin management decision making, including the application of harvest control rules in harvest strategies. However, these outputs and uncertainty around them are dependent on many factors, including subjective choices of the practitioner. What are good practices in stock assessment (from data rich to data poor) and how can they be best delivered in a cost-recovery environment?

Chairs | Geoff Tuck, Rich Little, Gretchen Grammer, Culum Brown

Fisheries worldwide grapple with pressing challenges, including overfishing, climate change, and resource scarcity. In response, cutting-edge technologies—such as Electronic Monitoring (EM), Artificial Intelligence (AI), and Machine Learning (ML)—are emerging as powerful tools to address these issues. This session delves into the applications and potential of AI and ML for fisheries management and industry, emphasizing their pivotal role in sustainable management practices and cost reduction.

Chairs | David Smith, Thor Saunders, Dan Corrie and Pia Bessell-Browne

The use of ocean and coastal area resources is expanding at a rapid rate causing mounting pressure on coastal and marine ecosystems. In Australia, these multiple sectors include commercial fisheries, recreational fisheries, oil and gas exploration, marine renewable energy, marine park reform and rezoning, and potentially offshore aquaculture.

Against this background, Australian wild-catch fisheries are currently facing unprecedented pressures and challenges, including the impacts of climate change, the competition for marine space and interactions with other industry sectors (the “spatial squeeze”), decreasing data quality and availability for inputs to stock assessment, and increasing cost pressures due to increased input costs and labour shortages.

Dealing with these challenges is complex given the need for agencies to continue ‘business as usual‘ activities, and cost-recovery limiting flexibility in monitoring and research, and delivering the obvious need for more strategic approaches.

These pressures and challenges present significant risks to the fishing industry. In addition, many of these issues are also relevant for recreational and charter fisheries. Clearly, some of these challenges require policy solutions but there is also a significant role for research.

This special session will identify these challenges, explore current research, and highlight the role of future research.

Chairs | Skye Barrett and Beckie Leaversuch

This session will directly address how to apply science in policy to effectively manage and sustainably use fish and other aquatic resources in freshwater and marine ecosystems, focusing on the challenges and opportunities ahead. Submissions that address the following areas of managing Fish Frontiers are invited to submit abstracts for the sessions:

• The use of innovative technology in Fisheries monitoring and regulation

• The use of advanced technology to assess ecosystem impacts including bycatch and Threatened and Endangered Species (TEPS)

• Adaptation to change and ecosystem-based management approaches

• The role of stakeholder collaboration and engagement

• Research and innovation to better understand the dynamics of fish frontiers and develop more effective management strategies.

Chairs |   Jürgen Geist, Craig Boys and David Harasti

This session will explore the latest advancements and pressing challenges in habitat restoration for ensuring the sustainability of fish populations and aquatic ecosystem functioning. We welcome submissions that address scientific experiments and practical experiences from all types of aquatic habitats, including but not limited to:

•     Innovative techniques for habitat restoration (river, wetland, estuarine or marine)

•     Mitigation of multiple stressors and ecosystem-based approaches

•     Nature-based solutions

•     State-of-the-art in fish-friendly infrastructure design

•     Restoring connectivity

•     Evidence on the return of investment to restoration work

Chairs | Tim Marsden, Ivor Stuart and Cindy Baker

This special session aims to illuminate recent advances in fish passage knowledge and technology, reflecting on their pivotal role in supporting migratory fish communities amidst climate change and heightened needs for water security in Australia. As knowledge increases concerning migratory ecology and ecological triggers, this session will explore cutting-edge improvements in fish passage technology. Presentations will focus on innovative fishway designs that accommodate 21st century knowledge and the application of novel monitoring techniques that enhance our understanding of fish migration. By integrating the latest scientific research with practical advancements, this session seeks to provide a comprehensive overview of how new technologies are facilitating ecological resilience and sustainability in regulated rivers. This session is of keen interest for ecologists, engineers, policy makers, and conservationists aiming to forge collaborative pathways for conserving migratory fish populations while ensuring ecological and community resilience in the face of environmental changes.

Chairs | Tom Rayner and Rod Price

This special session will explore the future of modern fish-protection screening technologies. It will cover the latest innovations, challenges, and opportunities shaping the future of fish protection in aquatic environments and the sustainability of human water use. Topics will include interdisciplinary implementation of this best practice, emerging technologies and advancements in design and manufacturing, and the integration of ecological, economic, social, and cultural considerations. We invite researchers, industry experts, policymakers, water users and anglers to contribute insights and engage in forward-thinking discussions to guide the future of screening.

Chairs | John Morrongiello, Jessica Randall, Laura Michie and Simon Mitrovic

Extreme events have always played a critical role in shaping freshwater and marine aquatic environments. These events are, however, becoming more frequent, intense, and impacting on larger spatial scales. Fish and aquatic ecosystems are often at the frontline, experiencing the brunt of increasingly extreme conditions.

This special session will explore the past, present and future of fish, fisheries and aquatic ecosystems at the extreme frontier. We aim to investigate the resilience and vulnerability of fish and the fisheries they support as they face a stark ultimatum: adapt or perish. We will then consider the broader environmental context and assess how environmental change operating on different scales can shape biological and management responses to extreme events.

Presentations are sought across a range of topics in both freshwater and marine systems, including but not limited to:

1. How are extreme events, like marine heatwaves, cold water pollution, drought, floods, bushfires and hypoxia, reshaping aquatic life in our oceans and rivers? This could involve studies exploring behavioural, physiological, demographic, life history and assemblage-level responses to extreme events, as well as fisheries and the human systems they support.

2. How do the impacts of extreme events on fish and fisheries compare to larger-scale climate phenomena, such as general climate warming, the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), the Southern Annular Mode (SAM), the Indian Ocean Dipole (IOD), and the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO)? Does this broader environmental context modulate the impacts of extreme events?

3. Understanding the adaptive strategies fish employ to mitigate extreme events, including investigating the boundary between survival and extinction.

4. Management of extreme events; including advanced methods for predicting extreme events and their impacts on aquatic systems and management practices that may help mitigate impacts on fish, fisheries and aquatic ecosystems.

Chairs | Luke Carpenter-Bundhoo, Jerom Stocks and Qifeng Ye

The four extant species of the genus Maccullochella are Australia’s largest freshwater fishes, garnering a proportional interest from scientists and recreational anglers alike. We propose a special session dedicated to presenting and discussing aspects of research, management, societal and cultural values of these magnificent fishes. Topics for discussion will include but are not limited to active and passive monitoring techniques, conservation and fishery trade-offs, genetic structuring, hatchery research and field ecology, and influence of flow regimes and environmental water. Those from marginal Maccullochella country (e.g. WA, TAS, NT, NZ, Pacific Ocean) are still welcome to attend.

Chairs | Lee Baumgartner, Jason Thiem and Stacey Bierwagon

The 3 Minute Thesis (Sponsored by CSU)

Experience the thrill of condensing years of research into just three minutes at the CSU-sponsored 3 Minute Thesis competition. This exciting event, organised in collaboration with the ASFB Education Committee, challenges participants to present their groundbreaking research in a concise and engaging manner.

Intrigued? Here's how it works: ASFB Student Members registering for the conference will receive an email with option to enter the 3 Minute Thesis competition, you will then be required to provide a video submission of your 3MT prior to the conference. A panel will select State, NZ, and International finalists to compete in person in this dedicated special session at the ASFB Conference on the Monday afternoon. The inaugural winner will receive a trophy and cash prize to be announced at the Student Mixer on Monday night.

For consistency, we’ll follow the official 3MT rules. View Here.

Join us for a showcase of research prowess, where innovation meets brevity in the pursuit of academic excellence, showcasing the best in our student members.

* Please note students should still register for the regular program and other awards, this is a bit of bonus fun.

Chairs: Amy Tims, Michael Hammer, Mitchell Brennan and David Morgan

Australia’s native aquatic fauna is highly imperilled, facing threats from climate change, invasive species, and a number of other anthropogenic impacts. With no foreseeable reduction in these threats, conservation actions will remain critical to ensuring the future of Australia’s unique aquatic biodiversity.

This special session explores the variety of research being undertaken to better understand and conserve Australia's aquatic species, including monitoring and surveillance; captive breeding, translocations and soft-release trials; and restoration and development of natural and artificial habitats. Just as the threatening processes faced by Australian species are highly diverse, so too must be the range of conservation actions taken to effectively combat these threats.

In this session, we aim to showcase conservation successes, and to discuss ongoing difficulties and challenges faced in threatened species conservation. We welcome abstracts relating to conservation in both freshwater and marine environments, and of both fishes and invertebrate species. Submissions relating to marine species (e.g., seahorses, handfishes, sharks and rays) and freshwater invertebrates (e.g., Euastacus spp.) are particularly encouraged.