Dr Cathy Dichmont: leading northern fisheries and ecosystems research

Dr Cathy Dichmont brings a world-class reputation in fisheries modelling to the leadership of CSIRO research into northern fisheries and ecosystems.

• 7 May 2008 | Updated 14 October 2011

• Northern fisheries and ecosystems research
• Current activities
• Background
• Academic qualifications
• Achievements

Dr Cathy Dichmont leads the Northern Fisheries and Ecosystems Research Stream in the CSIRO Wealth from Oceans Flagship. She is based at the Cleveland laboratories of CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research south of Brisbane, Queensland, Australia.

Northern fisheries and ecosystems research

Scientists are engaged in northern fisheries and ecosystems research study fisheries and related ecosystems in tropical and sub-tropical regions of Australia (including the Gulf of Carpentaria, Torres Strait and Great Barrier Reef) and nearby nations (primarily Indonesia and Papua New Guinea).

They integrate skills in marine biology and ecology with mathematical modelling and statistics to evaluate the status of fishery stocks, and environmental and socio-economic aspects of fishing.

Scientific advice in areas such as stock monitoring, policy development and bycatch mitigation supports the sustainable management of Australia’s northern Commonwealth fisheries and international fisheries that share stocks with Australia.

Current activities

In addition to research management, Dr Dichmont maintains a national and international reputation in stock assessment modelling, natural systems modelling, shared fisheries stocks and management strategy evaluation (MSE).

Her current projects include:

• integrating economic analysis and stock assessment in the northern prawn fishery (NPF)
• developing assessment and policy frameworks for Indonesia’s marine fisheries, including the control and management of Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported (IUU) Fishing
• developing and testing harvest strategies for the NPF under input and individual transferable quota controls
• designing information requirements for ecosystem based fishery management of Commonwealth fisheries
• testing and developing a tropical Atlantis model of the Gulf of Carpentaria.

She is also a team member in projects that are developing:

• techniques to estimate total allowable catches for the NPF major prawn species
• a spatially-explicit framework for managing the effects of trawling on biodiversity in the NPF
• a management strategy evaluation framework for Healthy Waterways in south-eastern Queensland, Australia.

Dr Dichmont also has extensive representative duties. She chairs the research and environmental sub-committee of the NPF Management Advisory Council and is a member of several state, national and international resource advisory committees.

Background

Dr Dichmont has extensive research experience in temperate and tropical marine ecosystems at international (South Africa, Australia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea), and regional levels (Benguela Current, Queensland, Northern Australia and Arafura Sea).

She began her career as a research assistant in freshwater biology at the University of Cape Town, South Africa, before tackling resource assessment and modelling with the South African Sea Fisheries Research Institute.

She joined CSIRO in 1999 from the Queensland Department of Primary Industries Fisheries Centre, Australia, where she managed a research program on stock assessment and modelling.

Key species covered in her research include:

• abalone
• sole
• horse mackerel
• prawn
• scallop
• whiting
• snapper
• shark
• crab
• cormorants.

Academic qualifications

Dr Dichmont has been awarded a:

• Bachelor of Science with Honours in zoology and botany
• Master of Science in quantitative resource ecology from the University of Cape Town
• Doctor of Philosophy in mathematics from the University of Tasmania, Australia.

Achievements

Dr Dichmont’s stock assessment work for Australia’s northern prawn fishery led to a reduction in fishing levels and a subsequent recovery of tiger prawn stocks.

A unique bio-economic model she developed for the fishery with colleagues from CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research Division (CMAR) and the Australian National University, Canberra, Australian Capital Territory, has guided the formation of a harvest strategy that seeks economic sustainability and to reduce the impact of trawling on seabed habitats.

Dr Dichmont was awarded a University of Cape Town Postgraduate Bursary in 1987 and the Queensland Seafood Industry Best Research Project Award in 1999.

In 2007, she was a finalist in the Public Service Science category of the Queensland Smart State Women awards.

Read more about the Wealth from Oceans Flagship.