Tuna Australia's research program based in Ulladulla Harbour

Onboard an Ulladulla-based fishing boat [Markarna] owned by Paul Lavalle was Tuna Australia Program Manager Phil Ravanello who is in charge of the project.

Even for Damian McGill from the Milton Ulladulla Times who knows nothing about the fishing industry, learning about the research was interesting.

It's also special that world-first research has such a strong Ulladulla link.

Before we talk about the research project, particularly the world first part, Mr Ravanello explains that Tuna Australia is the industry association and looks after long-line fishermen all over Australia.

Mr Ravanello is running all the research projects on Mr Lavalle's boat.

One of the project's aims is to collect data on how to stop interactions with threatened, endangered, or protected seabirds.

"One of the main risks in our fisheries is the risk of seabirds diving down and eating our bait as we let it go off the back of the boat," Mr Ravanello said.

Fishermen do follow rules around making sure their baits sink quickly but the project manager said improvements could be made.

"What this project is doing is looking at how we can improve and make that bait sink faster," he said.

Currently, there is a risk factor with the weighted hook concept which requires them to have a 60-gram swivel on the gear to make it sink faster.

This gear can become a projectile and harm people when they are bringing in a catch and Mr Ravanello said this regularly causes injuries to the fishermen.

"We want to develop new ideas to make the gear sink swiftly and also take that unsafe issue out of it for the fishermen," he said.

In essence, they are trying to come up with a method that is safe for the birds and for the fishermen.

They headed out to sea recently from Ulladulla Harbour with equipment that can measure the sink rate of the gear on boat.

Mr Ravanello said the second part of the project was looking at how they could manipulate the boat to get a better sink rate as well.

They looked at boat speed and at the speed at which the fishing line comes off the boat to see if they could make the gear sink faster.

The team set the gear up in different directions, with, against and across the current to see if they can "measure it and get faster sink rates".

Mr Ravanello said the boat/line speed part of the research project was the most interesting part of the trip for the team.

He said nobody in the world had yet to look at the boat itself to see if they "tinker" with a few things and see if they can get improvements.

"The stuff that is unique and novel about this is actually manipulating boat speed, direction relative to current and the way we deploy the line - that has not been done to this degree at all in the world that we are aware of," he said.

"A faster sink rate will stop the birds from getting the bait when it comes off the boat," he said about the importance of achieving a faster sink rate.

The project manager said the issue with trying to protect the birds had been a decades-long one but added the fishing industry had done a lot of work on coming up with solutions.

"It's about continual improvement for this fishery," he said.

"Industry cannot rest on its laurels and expect the problem to go away - there are things we actually need to work on.

"All of this stuff is the industry taking control of its own destiny."

He said the industry also has international and national obligations it needs to follow.

This latest trip/research project was for five to six days.

If the results are favourable the methods will be then tried on other sorts of boats - like fiberglass boats and catamaran-style boats which could take a few months to complete.

He is confident the concepts they are trying will work but will go "back to the drawing board" if they don't.

"It is about raising everyone's standard and making this information available to everyone," he said.

"If I am out in the ocean and I am surrounded by birds - I will actually have a playlist to work off now."

The data is also being shared with honours and doctorate University of the Sunshine Coast research students.

"We actually have some very smart kids working on this stuff - because it benefits us and we want the answers but it gives them a big scientific project that they can sink their teeth into," he said

External grant funding for the project came from the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation and other partners

In-kind support is coming from the Ulladulla Fishing Co-op and support from locals like Paul Lavalle.

Ulladulla was chosen because of the region's large concentration of birds

"It makes sense to come up with solutions in the area where they are needed," Mr Ravanello said

The findings will be transferable to other fishing regions.

"I guess the buzzwords here for us are sustainability, industry solving its own problems, not being mandated or told by the government that this is what you must do - being proactive and taking the lead," he said

"This long-line fishery in Australia is the cleanest, most sustainable, best-managed fishery in the world - tuna long-line fishery in the world - nobody in the world has the restrictions we have."

He said cameras on the boats record every second of the fishing operation and a vessel monitoring system that tells the government where the boat is 24 hours a day - seven days a week

"We are going over and above what we have to do because we believe that we need to control our own destiny and if that means industry-led research then that is what we will do."

"The trip went ahead and we collected a significant amount of data on the different seabird protection devices and concepts we are testing," Mr Ravanello said.

"We are currently preparing data for analysis by students at the University of Sunshine Coast, planning other parts of the project we need to collect data for and scheduling a return sea trip in the next couple of weeks."