Indirect Impacts of COVID-19 on a Tropical Lobster Fishery’s Harvest Strategy and Supply Chain

Abstract

The Torres Strait tropical rock lobster Panulirus ornatus (TRL) fishery is of immense social, cultural and economic importance to the region’s Indigenous fishers from both Australia and Papua New Guinea (PNG). During 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic indirectly impacted this fishery as well as a number of other fisheries reliant on international export markets. The TRL fishery is managed using an empirical (data-based) Harvest Control Rule (eHCR) to rapidly provide a recommended biological catch (RBC), based on catch, fishery-independent survey indices and catch-per-unit-effort (CPUE). Here, we summarize the impacts of COVID-19 on each of these critical data inputs and discuss whether the eHCR was considered adequately resilient to this unprecedented disruption to the system. Next, we use a quantitative supply chain index to analyze the impact of disruptions to the supply chain, and inform on potential adaptation strategies. The catch and CPUE data were impacted to varying degrees by external constraints influencing fishing effort, but the fishery-independent survey wasn’t affected and hence there remains an unbroken survey time-series for the fishery extending back to 1989. The eHCR was shown to be reasonably robust because it incorporates longer-term trends over a 5-year period, and accords substantially more weighting (80%) to the fishery-independent survey rather than CPUE data which can be affected by trade and other disruptions. Despite the eHCR not having been tested for scenarios such as a global pandemic, this robustness is a positive given the types of disruptions we will likely face in future climate. The weak links identified in the supply chain were the same as those previously highlighted as sensitive to climate change disruptions. Our supply chain analysis quantifies the impact on system resilience of alternative paths connecting producers to consumers and reinforces that supply chains may be particularly vulnerable to external disruptions if they are not sufficiently diverse.

Impact of the Pandemic Covid-19 to the Indonesia Seas

“…The decline in fishing in the sea is due to the decrease in international demand for fish. The same is true of other countries (Plagányi et al, 2021) The resulting impact is the increasing quantity of fish in the ocean, especially in the south of Java, which has been overexploited. Furthermore, there is an improvement in the pollution content in the atmosphere.…”

“…The decrease was also caused by the reduced demand for fish exports from Indonesia. Previous research had also suggested that export demand from Australia to other countries was decreased during the pandemic (Plagányi et al, 2021). In the ocean, noise could be generated by water column dynamics and human activities such as ship engines (Erbe et al, 2020).…”

Aquaculture Production and Value Chains in the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…There are concerns of aquaculture products by hindering fish supply from farmers to consumers. The COVID-19 outbreak has had great impacts on seafood supply chains [70]. The protection measures against the spread of COVID-19 have directly affected each step of fish harvesting, marketing, and exporting that may undermine the economic viability of aquaculture (Table 1).…”

Initial impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on Australian fisheries production, research organisations and assessment: shocks, responses and implications for decision support and resilience

“…These measures disrupted fisheries production and scientific activity by restricting operational activities and movement of product and people (Asante et al 2021 ; Sorensen et al 2020 ), limiting supply of inputs to both fish harvesting and research activities (Chang et al 2022 ), de-coupling freight links to markets (Carlson, et al 2021 ), and dampening seafood demand (Fernandez-Gonzalez et al 2021 ; Giannakis et al 2020 ). Further knock-on effects identified include negative feedbacks on fisheries assessment and harvest settings arising from limited supply of fishery dependent data due to reduced fishing effort (Haas et al 2021 ; Link et al 2021 ; Plagányi et al 2021 ).…”