R&D News

  Volume 13, Edition 4

Boomers bad news for industry

The sea-change phenomenon poses serious issues for commercial fishing, all of them bad, according to a leading commentator on demographic and social change.

Far from being over, the migration of baby boomers from the cities to the coast probably was at a mid-point, KPMG partner Bernard Salt said in his keynote address to Seafood Directions.

Next year, the baby boomer generation – people born between 1946 and 1951 – will peak at 4.1m. In this generation, income is maximised between the ages of 43 and 48 followed, for many, by the desire to make a sea-change.

“They’re pushing through this income peak now. Half are across the line and half have yet to cross,” he said.

But already 3.9m people were living on the coast outside capital cities. In a population of 20m, this had created a genuine new Australian culture, Bernard Salt said. The potential for the boomer component to double posed major problems for commercial fisheries.

“It’s not just their numbers. It’s their values,” he said.Sea-change boomers would put more pressure on coastal resources, including recreational fishing – “but they’re also mighty political”.

“You’ll find increasing opposition to what they see as exploitation of the marine environment,” he said.

Bernard Salt said the first boomer would reach offical retirement age in 2011 and 4.3m would follow, becoming the first generation with the expectation of living for 35 years after retiring. For the seafood industry he offered a small upside: to achieve this life expectancy, the boomers would submit to a rigorous food regime – low, lite, out with meat, in with seafood…

Seafood spending

Re-focussing on the present, he said the average Australian household now spent $80 a year on fresh and frozen seafood, but with considerable differences from city to city:

• Sydney $108
• Perth $74
• Canberra $89
• Hobart $71
• Melbourne $83
• Darwin $70
• Brisbane $79

But Hobart’s $71 per annum represented a 73 per cent increase in five years – the greatest in the nation.

“Something big has happened there,” said demographic sleuth Salt.

HACCP as wild catch control

Eliminate the race for fish by establishing secure fishing rights, urged Grimur Valdimarsson, Director, Fishery Industries Division, of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, outlining his strategy to reverse the poor global image – and performance – of wild catch fisheries.

“If there is a problem in a wild catch fishery anywhere, wild catch fisheries everywhere attract a negative image,” he said in his keynote address to Seafood Directions.

The wild catch sector had failed to convince the public it had its act together and had been absent from the debate on over-fishing and other issues of community concern.

The resulting poor image was made worse by health scares, driven often by distorted reporting. This mattered, because seafood was in competition with alternatives.

“If consumers get a bad feeling, they’ll turn to other food.”

To reverse these ills, the first and most important step was to assign clear, legally secure fishing rights – decide who gets how much of what fish, he said.

His model for solving the problems on the water is the post-harvest one: HACCP – hazard analysis, critical control point. “Let government set the framework for sustainable development. Then let fishers make the operational decisions.

“Management of wild resources is a quality issue. The HACCP revolution has given the post-harvest responsibility to industry and it’s working,” Grimur Valdimarsson said.

Wild fishing’s future rested on sustainability, responsibility and safe and wholesome production.

Every fisher had to be seen to be doing not just the right thing, but more than the right thing. Why? “Because customer perception is our reality,” he said.

Imports? Get used to them

Time’s probably had never been this tough, Sydney Fish Market Managing Director Grahame Turk told Seafood Directions.

Under normal economic principles the combination of resource access constraints, higher operating costs and rising local demand would have increased the price of locally-caught seafood. But this hadn’t happened.

Cheap imports, he said, had set domestic price benchmarks. Sydney Fish Market does not handle imported seafood such as basa fillets and vannamei prawns.

Nevertheless, imports now accounted for 70 per cent of the nation’s total seafood consumption, and it’s “because we can’t produce enough ourselves”, responded Harry Peters, President of the Australian Seafood Importers’ Association.

He said previous environmental concerns were no longer an issue. The fisheries supplying two of the three major species imported – hoki and hake – had both achieved Marine Stewardship Council certification.

As for safety, Asian export standards were similar to and in some cases better than Australia’s and imported products also had to pass tests by the Australian Quarantine and Inspection Service.

Besides, all fish was good for you and imports now were essential to maintain a healthy lifestyle. In aquaculture, Harry Peters said, Australia’s relatively high cost of production resulted in high-value products and he forecast that local salmon producers would be hit next year when cheaper Chilean production came on line.

Instead of deepening the gulf between imports and local products, he advised domestic suppliers to concentrate on overcoming what he said was the major problem – Australians’ lack of confidence in preparing seafood in the home.

GBR shows priority is access

Commercial fisheries Australia-wide were urged to take recent history on the Greart Barrier Reef (GBR) as a signal they needed to protect their access rights.

University of Queensland lecturer Daryl McPhee said the GBR Marine Park Authority had insisted a decision to stop trawling and other commercial fishing on one-third of the reef’s accessable ground would have a negligible $500,000 impact on industry, so no compensation was necessary.

But a quick study through to post-harvest he conducted with the university’s Professor of Environmental Management Tor Hundloe showed a loss of at least $23m a year in profit foregone.

Consequently, Tor Hundloe told Seafood Directions, by early last month the Commonwealth had spent $75m compensation.

Daryl McPhee said a study of the social effects of a commercial closure in Florida had revealed it was followed in fishing families by domestic violence, divorce, suicide and mental illness.

“Does it happen here? Who knows? Who cares?” he asked.

He said the university’s GBR study showed the financial impact of the commercial closure reached beyond Queensland. Losers included the Sydney Fish Market, forced to forego seafood worth $1.4m a year.The commercial sector should make access security a national priority – perhaps THE national priority, he said. Commercial fisheries should also:

• Draw up access plans that defined their priority fishing areas
• Use only credible arguments to challenge purported industry impacts
• Not challenge biological arguments
• Use participatory EMS as an access tool
• Communicate likely impacts to their communities
• Make GIS maps to show communities how much ground would be closed to fishing
• Show local communities what they too were likely to lose

Tor Hundloe said he was not opposed to marine protected areas (MPAs), but was horrified that they were being established without an objective framework.On competition for access between recreational, commercial and no-fishing options such as exclusive MPAs, he said the objective way to decide was to determine what each sector was willing to pay.

“We’ve been caught for a long time in an erroneous calculation – equating spending to go fishing with the value of the fish.”

Unite to adapt to change

Change was accelerating and the Australian seafood industry’s only option was to adapt to it, FRDC Executive Director Patrick Hone told Seafood Directions.

Seafood remained the world’s biggest source of protein, but 60 per cent of it came from developing countries, with about 80 per cent of farmed seafood supplied by Asia, where production continued to rise.

Developing countries that had turned to seafood production to feed their people were now exporting their output to ease poverty and create wealth.

In Australia change ranged from rises in fuel prices and in the Australian dollar, to skills and labour shortages.

More subtle were the changing connections between supply and demand chains; more puzzling, a tripling in Australian consumption of prawns in the past 18 months.

Adapting to imposed changes demanded a collective response capable of advancing the industry as a whole, Patrick Hone said.

With change came opportunity and it was up to industry collectively to grasp it and re-emerge profitable and resilient.

A single promotion entity was one possibility but, more broadly, adaptations that had to be made.

Trust is the key

The call for unity was echoed by Seafood Australia publisher Norm Grant, who called for cooperation horizontally, between wild-harvest, aquaculture and import sectors; and vertically, between producers, wholesalers, retail and food service end users.

Cooperation too with consumers who, he said, “we sometimes try to confuse or even force into buying patterns, rather than seduce”.

He said after 35 years in the industry, he found the continuing lack of engagement between sectors astounding.

“There are no solutions – I guarantee this – in trying to put each other out of business.

“There are no solutions in developing strategies that are good for one sector but not for the adjacent ones, depended upon for product, or for sales.”

As for trust, this was how the industry did most of its business, with millions of dollars worth of seafood traded each day over the phone by people who had learned to trust each other.

“These producers and buyers who represent the backbone of seafood commerce understand about cooperation and trust.

“We need our industry leaders and politicians to learn the same lesson and to start developing strategies based on the same inter-sector engagement, cooperation and trust.”

Waste is a growth business

Australia’s biggest fertiliser company, Incitec Pivot, has signed up to market an organic fertiliser based on what formerly was seafood processing waste.

BioPhos, as it’s known, was developed in FRDC’s Southern and Eastern Scalefish and Shark Fishery (SESSF) Industry Development Subprogram.

East coast seafood processors and retailers who previously paid up to $150 a tonne to dispose of fish waste can now sell it at a profit.

The fishy component of BioPhos is transformed on site into an odourless liquid, using simple machinery with a capital cost of about $100,000.

Australian Seafood Co-products (ASCo), a company developed by the subprogram to turn the waste into an asset, buys the liquid nutrient from the processors and transports it to Incitec Pivot pilot plants in Victoria and New South Wales, where it is blended with rock phosphate to make a fertiliser that in initial trials made four times more phosphate available to plants than can be delivered by rock phosphate alone.

It also is more resistant to leaching from the soil.

Subprogram Leader and ASCo Chair Ian Knuckey told Seafood Directions that with a minimum of 20,000t of seafood waste available on the eastern seaboard each year, a broadscale and, ultimately, broadacre application had been the most appropriate initial solution.

A memorandum of understanding signed with Incitec Pivot and garden supplier Yates was likely to be converted to a formal agreement later this year.

ASCo shareholders are 17 seafood companies, the Sydney Fish Market and FRDC.

Grey nomads as ambassadors?

A seafood and aquaculture trail on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula sold 20,000 tours last year, despite its relative remoteness adjoining the Nullarbor Plain.

In doing so, it disclosed a potential gem of information – Australia’s so-called grey nomads could become frontline ambassadors for the seafood industry, Bruce Zippel, Chair, South Australian Aquaculture Council, told Seafood Directions.

He said retirees on the road in mobile homes were the the trail’s biggest customer sector and the most interested and enthused – “they seek knowledge and pass it on”.

Already about 30,000 mobile homes rolled through Ceduna, at the edge of the Nullarbor, each year and with baby boomers approaching retirement age numbers would grow significantly.

This, he said, created opportunity for the seafood industry – “should we target grey nomads as a resource?”

Despite its remoteness the Eyre Peninsula claims to have the southern hemisphere’s biggest commercial fishing fleet and employs 2000 people in seafood operations that generate $440m a year.

Its seafood trail is operated by 15 businesses, from abalone and seahorse farms to rocklobster live holders and seafood processors. Each provides guided tours.

NSW wants uniform labelling

Consumers nationwide deserve uniform labelling laws for seafood, says Terry Outtrim, Executive Director, Operations, of the New South Wales Food Authority.

And he told Seafood Directions the seafood industry should self-regulate both labelling and the uniform use of approved marketing names – “otherwise, others will do it for you”.

The NSW authority, with about 100 staff, describes itself as Australia’s first through-chain food regulatory agency; its mission, to ensure safety for consumers.

Last year it inspected 296 seafood outlets, found that 75 per cent of them were selling imported prawns, but 45 per cent of these were not labelling them correctly. A similar inspection found limited evidence of product substitution, with 98.6 per cent of wholesalers visited using approved marketing names, as were 99.5 per cent of retailers.

However one prosecution had been made for the substitution of Nile perch for barramundi and others were pending.

Terry Outtrim said as most seafood sold in NSW was imported it was essential that consumers were able to use this knowledge as a basis for an informed buying decision, even when imports were labelled as packaged in Australia.

We need a levy, says ASIC

“IT’S my fervent belief industry must face up to that dirty four letter word – levy,” was Australian Seafood Industry Council Chair Bob Pennington’s closing message at Seafood Directions.

He said the bottom-up funding used to date had failed and would continue to do so.

“We need a levy to have top-down funding, where money can be supplied to sector bodies, state bodies, port associations and whoever else needs work to be done.

“Otherwise, we will struggle forever.”

He said he envisaged a levy that applied equally to Australian and imported seafood.

Engage or perish

“We’re no longer people who can go out in boats and hope someone back home will look after our business,” was FRDC Executive Director Patrick Hone’s parting message.

“If you do not engage, you will not have a seafood industry,” he said.

Social capital’s a survival kit

Seafood communities must build and use social capital to ensure survival, educational consultant Neville Grady told Seafood Directions.

He described social capital as: networks, bonding, teams, norms of behaviour, trust, reciprocity – I’ll do a good turn, you’ll do one back.

“It’s the glue that holds societies together. Without it, there can be no economic growth or human wellbeing.”

Neville Grady said social capital also was needed to set agendas and make decisions. Investment in physical and human captial would largely be wasted if social capital did not exist.

A seafood industry challenged by fragmentation, attracting and keeping good staff, consumer rights and packaging and labelling issues did not have the luxury of choice.

Generating and using social capital required an investment of money and time; and devoting sufficient of these resources to build and allocate it was too important to be left to chance.

RDCs and pollies big on seafood

AUSTRALIA’S other 13 rural R&D corporations were incredibly jealous of the seafood industry becauseof what they saw as seafood’s natural advantageover foods such as beef, lamb and grains, FRDCExecutive Director Patrick Hone told Seafood Directions.

They believed seafood’s quality, diversity and health benefits made communicating its advantages as simple as inviting people to sample it, something FRDC did with great success when it organised a Celebration of Seafood last month for federal politicians at Parliament House, Canberra.

“They couldn’t get enough of it,” said Patrick Hone, thanking the industry representatives who supplied southern rocklobster, scallops, farmed kingfish, southern bluefin tuna and other premium species.

“You’ve heard how seafood sells itself. You had to be there to believe it,” he said.

Fish-boats-gear day wanted

AT least one observer thinks future Seafood Directions would attract grass roots commercial fishermen if the program paid more attention to their immediate concerns. Fritz Drenkhahn, a South East Trawl fisher from Eden, New South Wales who attended the Sydney conference as a guest of FRDC, put fingers to keyboard on returning home:

Mercury warnings overdone

THE health risks of mercury in fish have been overstated and pregnant women should continue eating seafood, according to international seafood safety experts meeting in Sydney.

“The more immediate health benefits for the majority of people through eating a variety of seafoods far exceeds any possible lifetime consequences of eating specific species of fish noted for slightly higher levels of methyl mercury,” Steve Otwell from the University of Florida Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition told the World Congress on Seafood Safety, Quality and Trade.

“In other words,” he said, “for most people, the health benefits far, far outweigh any possible risk. “Our main concern is to protect pregnant women and their children.There is a large safety factor built into the existing international guidelines. All authorities agree they should continue to eat fish. It is important for the child.

“Pregnant women should follow the advice of local health authorities on how much they should eat of certain large, long-lived fish species. But don’t stop eating fish. That would do more harm than good.”

Bob Collette, Vice-president of Science and Technology in the US National Fisheries Institute, said emerging studies suggested babies whose mothers ate fish had improved brain development and function. The International Association of Fish Inspectors (IAFI), which organised the conference, called on government agencies and the media to be aware of the damaging consequences that could occur when statements on mercury were taken out of context or sensationalised.

MORE: Seafood Services Australia, phone 1300 130 321; email, ssa@seafoodservices.com.au

High hybrid diesel hopes

A HYBRID diesel-hydrogen engine that increases power while reducing diesel consumption by up to 80 per cent is being described as a major breakthrough by its creators at the University of Tasmania.

“Mixing hydrogen and diesel in the same combustion chamber is a revolutionary world first,” Visy Karri of the School of Engineering told the newsletter UniTas. And it is a retro-fit.

“Instead of creating a new engine we’ve designed a conversion procedure that can be fitted to any existing diesel infrastructure.” The research team said adding ‘just a spoonful’ of diesel to hydrogen increased power by 20 per cent and cut emissions drastically, besides reducing diesel consumption massively.

The fuel mix is managed by what its designers call a mechatronic controlled injection unit.

MORE: Vishy Karri, University of Tasmania, email Vishy.Karri@utas.edu.au.

SA takes it to the people

AQUACULTURE researchers in South Australia delivered briefings directly to interested members of the public and industry in Port Lincoln last month.

The projects they outlined are part of a package called Innovative Solutions for Aquaculture Planning and Management that aims to develop tools to ensure that the sector in SA remains sustainable and competitive. These tools are being designed to:

• Identify more effective ways to manage aquaculture
• Minimise the regulatory burden on industry
• Ensure that environmental considerations remain a priority

At the briefing, attended by about 50 people, Kate Hutson from Adelaide University talked about her research on wild kingfish populations in Spencer Gulf, including the potential for parasite interaction with farmed fish.

Simon Bryars from the South Australian Research and Development Institute (SARDI) outlined an environmental audit being made of SA marine aquaculture developments.

Derak Hamer from SARDI provided an update on seal interactions in finfish aquaculture and his colleague Jason Tanner discussed spatial impacts and carrying capacity in finfish farming.

The Port Lincoln briefing, one of a series, allowed direct communication between researchers and anyone interested in aquaculture, said Ian Nightingale, Executive Director, Aquaculture, of Primary Industries and Resources SA, which has jointly funded the Innovative Solutions package with FRDC.

MORE: email lara@innovativeaquaculture.com; www.innovativeaquaculture.com

Climate change moving fish

CLIMATE change is driving the fish of the North Sea northwards towards the Arctic, according to British researchers.

They say further rises in sea temperatures are likely to have profound impacts on commercial fisheries through continued shifts in fish distribution.

In a paper published in the June edition of Science, Allison Perry and John Reynolds of the University of East Anglia and Paula Low and Jim Ellis of the Lowestoft Laboratory say both exploited and unexploited species have responded markedly to recent increases in temperature, with nearly two-thirds of 90 demersal species studied shifting in mean latitude or depth, or both, during the past 25 years.

For the future, they say species with more rapid turnover of generations may show the most rapid demographic responses. Climate change may also strongly influence abundance, through changes in growth, survival, reproduction, or responses to changes at other trophic levels.

In Australia possible evidence is emerging of a corresponding move towards the Antarctic. A coral reef has been discovered in Bass Strait and a New South Wales long-spined sea urchin is now established in Tasmanian waters.

Compared to Britain, the commercial implications of changes in distribution are more complex for Australian fisheries because of the existence here of eight jurisdictions whose boundaries will not move with the fish.

MORE: Allison Perry, email a.perry@uea.ac.uk; John Reynolds, email reynolds@uea.ac.uk.

Bob puts new spin on old ways

BOB Alexander’s invoices arrive at the FRDC office in a time-honoured form – handwritten.

From the Western Australian hamlet of Green Head (pop 300) he and son Glenn continue another tradition older than scribes and parchment – catching octopuses in baitless pots.

But, tradition aside, Bob, 63, and Glenn, 27, are taking the refuge pot technology of the ancient Greeks and feudal Japanese to a new peak of efficiency.

Through FRDC project 2004/248 they have doubled their catch per unit of effort and reduced costs by developing a winch retrieval system.

“We also can use a smaller boat, work our gear in rougher weather than before and Glenn’s not breaking his back hand-pulling, restacking and re-setting pot lines that have 40kg of ballast at either end,” Bob Alexander said.

The father and son work flat weed shallows about 35km north and south of Green Head from a trailered seven metre aluminium planing hull with twin outboards.

“With our new technology the weather lets us work about four days a week on average and trailering means we burn only about $20 of outboard fuel a day.”

The new gear is called a double refuge pot retrieval system – double refuge, because the pots of 100mm diameter PVC pipe are bolted together in parallel pairs, with concrete blocking one end of each; its weight ensuring they lie flat and motionless on the ocean floor.

“The openings of each pair are at opposite ends, to separate the occys so they don’t fight each other,” Bob Alexander said.

The father and son settled on the double refuge configuration after years experimenting with different shapes and sizes.

Shorter lines, better catches

Instead of the conventional WA longline of 100 pots strung four to six metres apart, the Alexanders set shorter lines of 20 pairs, each at three fathom spacings – about 5.4m.

“Short lines are easier to shoot and retrieve and they let us place our pots on productive ground in a way that’s not possible with longlines. This is a big factor in increasing the catch rate,” he said.

Previously they used to tub the retrieved pots, remove the octopuses, restack, then re-set – all by hand.

The winch-based retrieval system they have designed with FRDC funding pulls the gear and slides each pair of pots on to a horizontal rack, from which it runs off automatically for re-setting.

Commercial-grade cloth is rigged under the rack, hammock-like, into which the octopuses slide.

“We needed something they couldn’t attach themselves to with their suction pads and the cloth does the job.

“We’ll refine this a bit further, so they slide from a cloth hopper into a basket or bin,” he said.

The Alexanders remove the octopus heads at sea and chill the carcasses in an onboard ice slurry for transport to Green Head, where they are bagged in one kilogram packs and frozen for the WA restaurant market.

Access hiccup

It’s a venture that hasn’t all been plain sailing. When the Department of Fisheries WA recently reclassified octopus fishing as a new industry it overlooked the Alexanders who, Bob said, had been filing regular octopus catch returns since 1988.

With some outside help they were reinstated but, under the departmental reclassification, renewal of their fishing licence is now subject to review.

“The department currently allows us to use up to 12,000 pots. Our soak time is up to 30 days and we aim to retrieve and reset 500 double pots per fishing day.”

The decision to seek FRDC funding to develop their innovation flowed from their attempt to reinstate themselves as octopus fishers in the eyes of the WA department.

“We went looking for friends. Our local member of parliament and Richard Stevens from the WA Fishing Industry Council (WAFIC) supported us and the WA Business Enterprise Commission subsequently helped a lot with our application to FRDC.

“And anyone who catches occys more efficiently has the rocklobster fishery on side, because they’re harvesting the major predator of rocklobster in pots.”

Beach price for the Alexanders’ product isn’t flash – just $7-8 a kilogram, which they put down to its low market profile.

“We’ve been experimenting with value-adding and have developed some interesting products that we hope to market soon.

“Either way, there’ll never be a fortune in it for us. My aim is a comfortable living for our two families from a low cost, sustainable operation that Glenn can then take over.

“The biggest benefits from the FRDC project will come if other WA octopus fishers decide they can use our system to work more safely, efficiently and profitably.

“If they do, the rocklobster fishery will benefit too.”

MORE: Bob Alexander, phone 08 9953 1813 (evenings).

Tasman Sea is warming fast

THE Tasman Sea is warming faster than any other oceanic water in the Southern Hemisphere and this trend and its impact on marine species will continue, the CSIRO says.

Observations over the past 60 years at an ocean monitoring station east of Maria Island, off Tasmania’s east coast, show summer surface temperatures have risen by about 2°C in that time.

“A shift in wind systems is affecting circulation in the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic ocean basins,” said the CSIRO’s Wenju Cai.

“Part of what we are seeing is a southward shift in the westerly wind systems that allow the East Australian Current to push further south near Tasmania.”

He said the wind change can be linked to ocean-atmosphere thermal dynamics, partially influenced by global climate change.

“During the past few decades marine ecosystems in the South Pacific have experienced significant changes, with a range of species extending further south.

“Our results indicate that these trends and their impact will continue,” Wenju Cai said.

The research will be discussed at a national climate change conference, Greenhouse 2005, in Melbourne next month.

It is part of the CSIRO Wealth from Oceans Research Flagship, supported by the Australian Greenhouse Office.

MORE: Wenju Cai, phone 03 6232 5222.

FRDC doing well, can do better

A MAJORITY of industry operators see FRDC as an efficient outfit with an intimate knowledge of key issues and a valuable ability to manage R&D funds and projects, according to independent research.

Research organisation IPSOS Australia said that, in interviews of more than 200 industry operators nationwide, 47 per cent – without prompting - identified FRDC as the organisation responsible for managing fisheries R&D nationally.

Total awareness, unprompted and prompted, was 87 per cent. Of these, 58 per cent rated FRDC’s performance highly.

At the commercial grass roots, high ratings came from 62 per cent of aquaculture operators and 55 per cent of the wild catch fishers interviewed.

IPSOS consultants Jonathan Jenkin and George Katos said overall impressions reflected an organisation that had the respect of its stakeholders.

Among their conclusions:

• FRDC is seen by most as efficient, well-organised and competent
• High confidence exists in FRDC’s ability to deliver on its core business role and objectives
• FRDC personnel are respected for their knowledge of industry issues and ability to undertake core activities
• High value is placed on FRDC funding governance and project management capabilities

The past five years’ R&D was rated highly by 56 per cent of respondents, with, 53 per cent saying it had a positive impact on their businesses.

Looking to the future, sustainability concerns and other uncertainties expressed by 80 per cent of respondents meant business operators were looking more than ever for strong leadership from FRDC, the IPSOS consultants said.

“FRDC is clearly empowered to take the Australian fisheries sector forward.”

The major perceived gap in fisheries R&D was a lack of funding for market development and product promotion – a concern volunteered by nine per cent of respondents.

FRDC also needed to work more closely with industry associations and improve its communication of current R&D initiatives.

Post-harvest appraisal of the Corporation was strong, but a majority of respondents believed ties with this sector should be strengthened.

MORE: Peter Horvat, FRDC Communications Manager, phone 02 6285 0414; www.frdc.com.au; IPSOS Australia, phone 03 9946 0888.

Making a direct connection

R&D News should be more interesting and should communicate more effectively with business operators, the IPSOS consultants said.

They said 93 per cent of respondents aware of FRDC believed the Corporation should interact and communicate more with stakeholders throughout the seafood supply chain.

Three out of four of these said they would like to know more about what FRDC did and how its activities could help them. R&D News was read by 80 per cent and, the consultants said, these respondents wanted to receive it by direct mail.

FRDC Communications Manager Peter Horvat said direct mail delivery would begin next January to all industry respondents who provided their postal address by December 31 – see coupon elsewhere in this edition.

Continuing improvements were planned to content and presentation, in line with the survey results, he said.

MORE: Peter Horvat, phone 02 6285 0414; www.frdc.com.au.

Recs’ national R&D approach

A committee charged with developing a national approach to undertaking, delivering and adopting R&D was set up at a workshop in Hobart organised by Recfish Australia and FRDC.

Based on an expansion of the steering committee overseeing FRDC’s National Strategy for the Survival of Line-caught Fish, its members are:

• Ross Winstanley (Chair)
• Bill Sawynok (Manager)
• Julian Pepperell (Industry research)
• Frank Prokop (Industry management)
• Doug Joyner (Tackle suppliers)
• Andrew Cribb (Fisheries communicators)
• Richard Sellers (Fisheries management)
• Matt Barwick (FRDC)
• Ian Brown (AFMF research)
• To be named (ASIC)
• John Diplock (Recreational fisheries management)
• John Harrison (Industry management)
• Jim Harnwell (Fishing media)
• Steve Sutton (Social research)

Its brief is to:

• Develop the process necessary for a national approach
• Identify national recreational R&D priorities for the next five years
• Devise practical links to existing R&D programs
• Develop a communications strategy to relay outcomes to recreational fishers and the broader community

Hobart workshop participants, representing allareas of recreational fishing, fisheries management agencies and research organisations, identified eight priorities for recreational R&D and the adoption of its results:

• Establish and promote the social and economic importance of recreational fishing
• Assume a greater responsibility for and develop the R&D and extension capacity of the sector
• Develop young people and industry leaders
• Continue to collect recreational fishing data, especially on attitudes, demographics, participation, fishing methods, catch and effort
• Understand the effects of MPAs on recreational fisheries and fishers
• Continue to research and promote best practice in releasing fish
• Improve the communication of research results and outcomes to recreational fishers
• Improve the performance of fishing competitions

To help establish a basis for long term funding, the committee will attempt to quantify recreational fishing’s national gross value of production. Its first meeting is scheduled for the end of this month.

Enhancement workshop

Recfish Australia and FRDC will also hold a workshop on stock enhancement on the 6-8 February 2006 in Brisbane.

The aim is to define a national approach to the use of stock enhancement as a management tool in both recreational and commercial fisheries and to further identify the associated R&D priorities.

MORE: Matthew Barwick, FRDC, phone 02 6285 0419; email matt.barwick@frdc.com.au; Bill Sawynock, email infofish@zbcom.net.

Survey Methods

FRDC commissioned IPSOS Australia to survey a representative cross-section of the Corporation’s industry stakeholders.

IPSOS interviewed 201 fisheries operators Australia-wide, sourcing interviewees from lists provided by FRDC and industry associations. Respondents included commercial fishers, aquaculturists, representatives of commercial and recreational fishing organisations and six fisheries managers. The fisheries managers and 14 others were key stakeholders nominated by FRDC.

Key stakeholder interviews were made face-to-face; all others were by telephone.

Face-to-face interviews took one to one-and-a-half hours; telephone interviews on average lasted 20 minutes.

Prawn studies a ticket to fly

Pioneering research in which scientists, managersand industry combined to explore the feasibility of raising juvenile prawns to enhance a wild tiger prawn fishery off Western Australia is attracting international interest.

“Stock enhancement is a popular conceptworldwide, largely driven by advances in aquaculture technology, but has rarely been subject to therigorous modelling and field assessment processes developed in this FRDC-funded initiative,” saidPrincipal Investigator Neil Loneragan of the Centrefor Fish and Fisheries Research at Murdoch University.

“The WA project drew together skills in fisheries ecology, stock dynamics, aquaculture, genetics and modelling to develop a robust framework that allowed fishery managers and industry to evaluate each stage of the enhancement process.

“It was a groundbreaking approach, and the research and its outcomes continue to attract widespread interest, with members of the research team receiving authorship and conference invitations from Japan, Malaysia and the United States.”

FRDC projects 1998/222 and 1999/222 developed systems to evaluate the risks and bioeconomics of using hatchery-based enhancement to increase the catch of brown tiger prawns in Exmouth Gulf by 25 per cen – about 100t.

A comprehensive bioeconomic model was developed to assess all aspects of the enhancement process, from broodstock collection to density-dependent growth and survival of released prawns.

The model identified key factors affecting enhancement performance, helped to communicate the research among project participants and outlined the costs and benefits of advancing to pilot-scale research and production.

Major advances were made in our understanding of prawn ecology and hatchery production, even though the ultimate economic assessment did not support the project progressing to the next phase - a pilot scale release of prawns into Exmouth Gulf, Neil Loneragan said.

“Surveys of benthic habitats and juvenile prawns and their predators yielded information on fishery ecosystem and recruitment processes that hasbeen incorporated in stock assessment and catch prediction models used in management of the wild fishery.

“And genetic identification techniques and high-density production systems for P. esculentus developed during the projects have been of benefit in aquaculture.”

Project partners were the CSIRO, the MG Kailis Group and the Research Division of the Department of Fisheries Western Australia.

MORE: Neil Loneragan, phone 08 9360 6453, email n.loneragan@murdoch.edu.au; Mervi Kangas, Department of Fisheries (WA), phone 08 9203 0164; email mkangas@fish.wa.gov.au

Boat stability – input wanted

A NEW stability standard for commercial vessels has been released and boat operators and others are being asked to put their views on how it should be further developed.

The new stability rules are part of the National Standard for Commercial Vessels (NSCV) that will gradually replace the Uniform Shipping Laws (USL) code. The NSCV reduces the number of stability categories to three. The USL code has nine.

For a full picture of the changes, two parts of the standard need to be read: Subsection 6a sets out the minimum stability performance criteria and subsection 6b details the tests and calculations required to demonstrate compliance with them. Within the documents the National Marine Safety Committee has highlighted sections on which it particularly seeks industry comments.

“For example, we would like opinions about changes to the categories used to describe how stability criteria and tests are applied to vessels – possibly the most significant change to the standard,” said CEO Maurene Horder.

Documents are available at www.nmsc.gov.au, or by phoning the committee on 02 9247 2124. Comments will be received till January 10.