Verification of fisheries sustainability credentials is essential to increase consumer confidence, market access and community benefit. Sector performance currently centres on monitoring fish stocks and economic performance. However, markets and stakeholder organisations increasingly require traceable evidence of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) indicators such as provenance, safety, diversity, animal welfare, carbon, biodiversity to inform decisions. To meet this need, this project activates CSIROs Healthcheck ESG Fisheries data system by engaging industry and Indigenous leaders, management agencies and researchers to identify targeted indicators, collect data, prioritise data gaps to enable more comprehensive ESG reporting. The reporting system is designed to collect and report data which is ready for ingestion into existing catalogues and exchanges (e.g., Ag Food data Exchange). Data is compatible and interoperable for publishing to recognised sustainability framework reporting (e.g. Status of Australian Fish Stocks, Marine Stewardship Certification, National Fisheries Plan, UN SDGs, Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosure, Australian Agricultural Sustainability Framework, Agricultural Innovation Australia (AIA) Environmental Accounting Platform), and ready for supplying relevant indicators and data for Australia’s Fisheries and Aquaculture Sustainability Framework development. We demonstrate the capability of this sustainability data reporting system with selected fisheries. New indicators address climate impacts and adaptation responses, food safety systems, modern slavery protections, sector-led initiatives to improve ESG outcomes, Indigenous sector participation and economic development, among others. Using and building new digital and LLM (large language model) technologies to identify, screen and verify data sources, the sustainability reporting data system reflects global standards in traceability of data itself. Data provenance pipelines provide a pathway for repeatable, routine data extraction and reporting, and increase data accessibility for the Australian fisheries sector. Construction of these pipelines has highlighted critical gaps to address and what actions to take to overcome remaining limitations on data accessibility and shareability for key ESG reporting areas.

Profit at full equity. ($AUD) Profit at full equity in fisheries refers to the profitability of all fishing businesses assuming that the businesses have full equity in their operations, meaning there are no outstanding debts associated with the investment in capital. This indicates financial status and performance of the fishery, based on the average performance of all firms in a fishery.

Presence of resource allocation policy or statute in the fishery jurisdiction (state/territory or Commonwealth) of operation. (%) Fisheries resource allocation refers to the process of determining how a shared fishery resource is divided among different users, such as commercial, recreational, and Indigenous fishers. The process is determined by the legislation (statute) or policy of a management authority with responsibility for managing that fishery resource.

Trend in average annual International Trade Price Index for imported fish (percentage change from previous year) The international trade price index describes the movements in price of imported fish products over time. Australian-produced wild caught seafood sold in domestic markets are sensitive to prices of imported fish. The majority of seafood consumed in Australia is from imported sources.

Average annual number of reportable safety incidents in the last 5 years. Safety incidents on commercial fishing vessels are those where this is a consequence for persons on board (crew, skippers and/or passengers). These consequences may be injury, person over-board or fatalities.

Metric: SAFS status SAFS status, based on most recent assessment. If species sustainability information is not available in SAFS, using the ERAEF categories (Low, Medium, High) is a reporting option for some AFMA-managed commonwealth fisheries, but not for the state fisheries (Semi-quantitative). Target species in each fishery are the primary focus for this indicator. Status of these species is ideally assessed with the SAFS approach, however this may not cover all target species for each fishery. In that case, we indicate the number of unassessed species. These species could also be assessed by individual states or by alternative methods.