Spotted Handfish survey. Report to the Australian Conservation Agency Endangered Species Program.

<p dir="ltr">Recent observations indicated the spotted handfish <i>Brachionichthys hirsutus,</i> once common in the Derwent Estuary, had suffered a dramatic decline in abundance, and that given it's restricted geographic range, was now endangered. To substantiate these observations, the present distribution and abundance of <i>Brachionichthys hirsutus</i> was investigated. Dive and trawl surveys were conducted within the known geographic range of this species, with effort focussed on areas previously reported to have the highest concentrations of handfish. These surveys included 33 hours of diving and two days of beam trawling in the lower Derwent Estuary, Frederick Henry Bay and the D' Entrecasteaux Channel. Despite the time involved searching, only six handfish were located during the study, all of these being on soft sandy substrates within the Derwent Estuary, in 6 to 10 m of water. The low population density confirms that this species has suffered a substantial decline in abundance over the last decade. Given the limited geographic distribution of this species, it's status must be lescribed as endangered. At present, the seastar <i>Asterias amurensis</i> appears to be the major threat to this species as <i>A. amurensis</i> was present and at high densities at the many of the locations and depths that handfish were found both during this study and historically.</p>