Maintaining and enhancing market access for Australian seafood is critical for future industry growth.
SafeFish makes a significant contribution to this by:
• Researching and providing technical input to international multilateral and bilateral trade negotiations such as Codex
• Providing research and technical support to food safety incidents to minimise trade disruptions, including supporting appropriate risk communication
• Identifying emerging food safety issues and determining appropriate research and technical responses that will protect Australia’s continued access to markets
• Conducting research on seafood hazards to support risk management decisions e.g. sulphites in canned abalone, cadmium in prawns, parasites in finfish.
• Facilitating national and international expertise networks (including networks between researchers, industry and regulators)
• Developing and supporting food safety research and diagnostic capabilities e.g. marine biotoxin laboratory, norovirus and hepatitis A virus testing
• Supporting productive partnerships between industry and regulators such as Biosecurity Australia and FSANZ to enable utilisation of research findings and to facilitate “considered” responses to food safety issues.
Funding is required to undertake research on priority issues, supportcapacity, infrastructure and capability that has been developed through SafeFish since 2010. The ASCRC estimates the benefit/cost ratio for SafeFish is 11 to 1 with benefits accruing far wider than just to the industries involved. Ensuring the safety of seafood and sustaining access to markets provides significant public benefit.
This application is to bridge the gap to assist the transition between the ASCRC winding up and the FRDC implementing the recent changes to the PIRD Act that will enable ongoing industry investment. Several industry sectors (Abalone Council of Australia, Southern Rocklobster Limited, & Oysters Australia) have also committed funding for SafeFish using their respective FRDC IPA funds.

Increasing fishing efficiency is one of the main ways fisheries can improve their profitability. This can be achieved in two ways for species that exhibit seasonal variation in weight – harvesting fewer individuals for the same catch (raise CPUE by increasing stock abundance), or catching the same number of fish but obtaining a larger catch (increase catch per day and overall). Recent research has demonstrated there are benefits to changing the fishing season in greenlip abalone, using information on their seasonally variable biology, to increase revenue, reduce exploitation rates, or achieve a combination of these two management objectives. This research has resulted in changes to seasonal greenlip fishing patterns made by Industry in the Western Zone of South Australia.
Blacklip abalone constitute 82% of the Australian abalone catch, so considerable benefits could be obtained from changes to the fishing season if they exhibit similar seasonal biological traits to greenlip. However, there are currently insufficient data to evaluate this. This project will address the need for additional information on the seasonal biology of blacklip and, following the success with greenlip, has been developed in direct response to the Western Zone of the South Australian abalone fishery seeking similar information on blacklip abalone. The proposal was discussed and supported by members of the Abalone Council of Australia in Adelaide on the 2nd May 2014 and is also a high priority for PIRSA Fisheries and Aquaculture.
The project will enable an analysis of newly obtained and existing data using the model already developed for greenlip. The outputs will be a cost-benefit analysis across a range of temporal fishing pattern scenarios. The key outcome will be adjustment of seasonal blacklip harvests, by industry, to maximise profitability.