There are concerns that poor water quality may be having an affect on the health of post-capture rock lobsters. This project addresses this in three ways:

1. Determining the optimal level of ammonia in holding and transport systems. This will contribute to the understanding of optimal system design.

2. Understanding the mechanism of ammonia toxicity. This will enable industry to develop methods to counteract the harmful effects.

3. Providing information to the rock lobster industry in the appropriate form to ensure uptake of the results of research on optimising water quality, specifically in the area of oxygen and ammonia.

Enhancement offers a mechanism to increase production of rock lobsters, both by increasing production from coastal reef and by providing a mechanism for biologically neutrality in the harvest of puerulus (and thus overcomes a barrier to ongrowing). Additional benefits include the ability to increase biomass and egg production in regions considered depleted, which enhances resource sustainability.

While the potential benefits of enhancement are broad, the value of the concept is critically affected by the survival of juveniles after release. Low survival would reduce the economic benefit and also nullify assumptions on the biologically neutrality of the harvest of puerulus.

The proposed project addresses the need for information on how to release juveniles (or condition juveniles prior to release) so that survival is optimised. Future release efforts will be assisted by information on habitat choice, so that return from enhancement is maximised, in terms of animals surviving through to harvest size. Large scale experiments tracking the cohorts of released juveniles will evaluate enhancement on a pilot-scale - patterns apparent in small scale experiments may not hold true in larger releases so larger scale experimental releases are considered vital.

The western rock lobster fishery prides itself on being one of the best-managed and demonstrably sustainable seafood resource in Australia. It is a substantial industry. Forecasts of catch for the 1999/00 season are 14,000,000kgs. The product is almost all exported, and a potential average selling price of $30.00 suggests direct revenue to Australia of over $400 million next year.

Accordingly, any modest improvements in the production processes or in customer perceptions can lead to substantial extra revenue to Australia.

Innovation in the industry has been slow due to high entry costs into the processing section of the industry and the exposure of processors the volatile beach prices and overseas demands and prices. This combined with the strong presence of processing co-operatives has minimised the attractiveness of the industry to new participants.

Without external assistance such as NSC, the potential benefits to the industry of changing production systems may not be realised for some time.

The sensory evaluations will seek to identify whether the consumers prefer the steamed product or are indifferent between steamed and traditionally cooked product. A marked preference for the steamed product would indicate the possibility of premium product positioning and special branding. Consumer indifference would suggest the commercial benefits could arise only from better yields in the production processes. A consumer preference for the traditionally cooked product would suggest the change in techniques would not be successful.