Fishery independent surveys of the commercial prawn community of the Gulf of Carpentaria have been undertaken annually for 15 years and generated indices of abundance for seven species.

The index of abundance for banana prawns is tightly correlated to annual banana prawn catch in the Gulf of Carpentaria. In addition, un-regulated annual flood flows from adjacent catchments are positively correlated with both the abundance index and the commercial catch.  A new conceptual model of the banana prawn life history facilitates our understanding that, under diverse flow regimes, estuarine production, food availability, prawn growth, prawn predation and emigration vary markedly and moderate the annual fishery yield.  The new model allows fishery managers to better understand the variation in 15-year indices not explained by flow, predict the impacts of anthropogenic flow modification, respond to likely landscape management charge, and target new research to explore solutions to flow modification and barrier construction that benefit the NPF compared to a laissez-faire situation.

The last 25 years of research in the Gulf of Carpentaria enables researchers to inform water management policy; aiming to sustain the ecosystem services in estuarine and nearshore habitats for downstream fisheries, while enabling the harvest of water for extractive use.