Four reefs that have been closed to fishing since 2000 will re-open on 6 March 2005, in the final stage of one of the biggest fisheries experiments in the world. CRC Reef’s Effects of Line Fishing Experiment spans more than 1000 kilometres on the Great Barrier Reef, and has been running for 10 years. It is gathering vital information on how fishing affects the number and size of fish on the Great Barrier Reef.

Unnamed reef 14-133 near Lizard Island, Fork Reef (18-083) off Townsville, Boulton Reef (20-146) off Mackay, and unnamed reef 21-139 near Storm Cay re-open to fishing on 6 March. Two of these reefs (Fork Reef and unnamed reef 21-139), are now zoned as Marine National Park (green) reefs under the current Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Zoning Plan and will open temporarily until and including 30 November only.

“Since 1995, we’ve been studying how various amounts of fishing affect fish populations on 24 reefs in four clusters of reefs from Cooktown to Rockhampton,” said Dr Annabel Jones, from the Effects of Line Fishing Experiment team at CRC Reef.

“The experiment is providing important information about the effectiveness of green zones and other management strategies. This will help managers to understand how we might expect to see fish stocks change following the implementation of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Zoning Plan and the Queensland Coral Reef Fin Fish Management Plan last year. It is also being used in computer models to assess the effectiveness of different management plans 25 or more years into the future,” Dr Jones said.

We’ve looked at a range of important commercial and by-catch fish species on the Reef. We have found that reefs closed to fishing can have more and larger coral trout and red throat emperor than those where fishing is allowed,” Dr Jones said.

Dr Phil Cadwallader, Director of the Fisheries Issues Group at the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority said “this is a world class experiment, which has provided Marine Park managers and fisheries managers with valuable information on which to base management decisions.”

Our Mission

Levels of line fishing effort that fish stocks and the reef ecosystem can sustain for long term management of the Great Barrier Reef.
Responses of fish stocks to differing levels of fishing pressure, and flow on effects of such responses to other reef organisms.
The relative size of target fish populations such as common coral trout.
Which methods are best for monitoring the state of fish stocks and the fishery.
Field work for the ELF Experiment started off in 1995 with surveys to determine the status of fish stocks on the experimental reefs prior to any changes to fishing pressure. The first round of experimental manipulations commenced in 1997 when the first experimental reefs were opened to fishing. The ELF Experiment will continue until 2005 when the last of the reefs closed to fishing as part of the experiment will re-open to fishing.

Organization News

The ELF Experiment involves 24 reefs located between Lizard Island north of Cooktown, and the Swains reefs off Gladstone , in the South. These reefs are grouped into four clusters of 6 reefs each.

Each cluster consists of four Marine Park B reefs (Green) which are closed to fishing and two General Use B reefs (Blue) which have been traditionally open to fishing.

Changing fishing pressure on these reefs has been achieved by changing the zoning status temporarily. In each cluster, two green reefs have been opened to fishing for one year only (on separate years) and the two blue reefs have been closed to fishing for five years. The ELF timetable lists these reefs and their stages of openings and closures to fishing.



Effects of Line Fishing (ELF) Project
The Effects of Line Fishing (ELF) Experiment is a large-scale manipulative experiment designed to investigate how reef fish populations and other species respond to line and spear fishing on a small subset of reefs in the Great Barrier Reef.

By carefully monitoring all the fish and other organisms during controlled changes in fishing pressure, we gain information about the reefs' responses to change in fishing activities. More specifically, information to be gained from this research includes:

Levels of line fishing effort that fish stocks and the reef ecosystem can sustain for long term management of the Great Barrier Reef.
Responses of fish stocks to differing levels of fishing pressure, and flow on effects of such responses to other reef organisms.
The relative size of target fish populations such as common coral trout.
Which methods are best for monitoring the state of fish stocks and the fishery.
The ELF Experiment was first considered in 1989 and between then and 1995, a lot of technical evaluations, design and public consultations was done to verify whether the experiment could be done.

Field work for the ELF Experiment started off in 1995 with surveys to determine the status of fish stocks on the experimental reefs prior to any changes to fishing pressure. The first round of experimental manipulations commenced in 1997 when the first experimental reefs were opened to fishing. The ELF Experiment will continue until 2005 when the last of the reefs closed to fishing as part of the experiment will re-open to fishing.

Design of the ELF experiment
Monitoring of the ELF reefs
Results of the ELF experiment so far
Where does the ELF data go?
What's happening now?
Design of the Effects of Line Fishing (ELF) experiment
The ELF Experiment involves 24 reefs located between Lizard Island north of Cooktown, and the Swains reefs off Gladstone , in the South. These reefs are grouped into four clusters of 6 reefs each.

Each cluster consists of four Marine Park B reefs (Green) which are closed to fishing and two General Use B reefs (Blue) which have been traditionally open to fishing.

Changing fishing pressure on these reefs has been achieved by changing the zoning status temporarily. In each cluster, two green reefs have been opened to fishing for one year only (on separate years) and the two blue reefs have been closed to fishing for five years. The ELF timetable lists these reefs and their stages of openings and closures to fishing.

Monitoring of the ELF reefs
There are two main research surveys carried out by the ELF researchers that allow them to monitor the reef stocks and other reef organisms over the duration of the ELF Experiment.