Using their heads - A novel, collaborative approach between industry and scientists to monitor a commercial mullet fishery as a result of COVID-19 restrictions.

The COVID-19 global pandemic-related restrictions during 2020 severely impacted the Australian seafood industry, including essential scientific monitoring to support stock assessment and to demonstrate sustainability. Here we detail a novel, collaborative monitoring program between scientists and the seafood industry to generate length and age compositions that were representative of one of the largest, most valuable, and controversial fisheries along eastern Australia, the pre-spawning ocean run fishery for Sea Mullet that is predominantly a roe fishery. The standard approach to monitoring this fishery has been to base trained scientific staff at the major processing facility for , where they access whole fish from entire catches to generate representative length and age compositions during the peak season, April to May.