GIS for fisheries and marine management is still in its infancy the world over. From the little bit of research I have done, there is very little fisheries based data available for public use in our part of the world. What type of data were you looking for specifically? The WA Department of Fisheries collects catch and effort data from the commercial sector through their VMS system, but much of this is covered by commercial confidentiality.

I would be checking the Geosciene Australia website to see what is available there, as well as the SLIP website for state based info.

 I've only got basic GIS knowledge and have used GIS for some basic coastal mapping, mainly just for changes in coastal morphology and water level etc. 

Im pretty sure Ive got some basic georeferenced marine charts, but I havent used them because they were quite old and lacked sufficient detail. 

I do have some DEM files for cockburn sound/fremantle, and also geographe bay, but again these are over quite a large scale and are not that detailed. Havent actually used them to try and benefit my fishing to be honest haha.

A number of my collegues use GIS to make quite detailed maps of marine habitats, through the use of satelite and aerial photography, etc. but as far as I'm aware much of this data is not publically available at this time. I will have a bit of a search around and see what I can find though. 

I've had a little exposure to GIS through work (I'm a civil designer/drafter).

We have a whole load of data sets but unfortunately nothing much for coastal information.

I'd be interested to hear how you get on locating shape files etc.

I'm always curious about where to source this sort of thing as most of ours were collected by a former employee and I'm not sure where he got them from.

 Hey guys thanks for the feedback,

Seems we would all like to do more with it. As a starting point i would like to have marine chart equivalents in GIS format. Im wondering what the basemaps are that run behind chartplotters etc? have you guys used these sorts of products and know what sort of files they are? because there might be some conversion tool out there... I know you can georeference a image but its not the same because its still just an image.

No doubt the best stuff is in the hands of those doing the science, perhaps asking the right person nicely might be the answer or perhaps im just jumping the gun on whats actually out there and GIS is more of an infant that i thought.

I have checked out ga.gov and i have subscription access to the SLIP portal, some cool stuff but not what we want. I wanna start plotting all my captures and species sightings etc in space and relate it to the relevant variables like temp, moon phase etc. Im still new to GIS so im not 100% sure what i would actually do with it... but i will worry about that down the track!

Thanks again for the feeback

 I spent three + years working in GIS reconstructing Hydrographic/Seismic/Terrestrial survey data sets for the govt, mining, oil and gas sectors. Think many long hours in the 2000's working with pcs, magnetic tape drives and software from 30 years earlier and data vaults with no windows, temp control and cold aircon - utterly soul destroying. I think you would be struggling to get any info without paying a shit tonne for it or being very lucky.  These data sets are often virtually priceless as the cost of sending a survey vessel or terrestrial survey team in to do a large area is massive.  After this is studying the data for minerals or whatever and making money from it, then they sell the data on to other companies etc.  Also there is issues with the data continuity where if they want more info on a small area and go and shoot it, it is difficult to integrate it with older survey information.  I know governments get very touchy about transporting their data sets in case of an emergency(plane crash/boat sinking/fire/flood destroying their data worth billions).  

Lowrance has a feature on its HDS gen 2/structurescan systems I think designed for surveying lakes in the northern us as many will nbever be surveyed basically it takes your chart information and then the sonar feed from the transducer and structurescan and overlaying them and recording them onto a card.  The user then goes home and uploads the data to a community internet site where other users could go and download.  Imaging a community project to structurescan cockburn and warnbro sounds? Or the Swan/canning river? Estuaries up north?

 Sarcasm0 thats a fantastic idea for a community project! I just checked out that lowrance function and it is pretty awesome! Things will be super exciting once that sort technology becomes more prevalent. Was checking out a mates home-made ~$1000 UAV the other day, it can take better small scale aerial photography than NearMap. It has an operational range of 40kms! Only problem is their little batteries would never take them that far!