[Produce a ‘Critical Review Paper’ to provide a potential roadmap for additional research, as well as help identify communication strategies for the seafood industry. This is a development and networking opportunity to create future relationships and collaborations]

This bursary will allow Professor Gillanders to attend the microplastics and seafood symposium in Edinburgh, Scotland. The focus of the symposium will be human health aspects of microplastics in seafood. The aim is to produce a critical review paper to provide a potential roadmap for additional research, as well as help identify communication strategies for the seafood industry. This is part of an international partnership between FRDC, Seafish (UK) and Seafood Industry Research Fund (USA) that will have 11 scientific experts attending along with industry. The symposium provides Australians with a unique opportunity to engage with experts and industry from around the world.

We will also visit several UK based research groups as part of our travel - we have already engaged with researchers from Plymouth Marine Laboratories, University of Plymouth and Exeter University including Professor Richard Thompson, the first researcher to identify microplastics as an issue.

After many years of interest but little on ground activity apart from a few established operations based on the harvest of beach-cast material, the seaweed industry is starting to gain momentum in southern Australia. There is particular interest in the farming of Asparagopsis for its methane reducing properties in ruminants, but also in several species for human consumption and other uses, including the golden kelp Ecklonia radiata. While much of the focus is on the development of an aquaculture industry, this needs to be supported by the wild harvest of seedstock, at least in the early years, and there is also some interest in wild-harvest for product. However, the knowledge base and tools available for managers to regulate this emerging industry are limited. This proposal aims to start filling in some of these gaps. The first is to develop an understanding of the biomass present in targeted areas, and importantly, the development of a rapid assessment tool to do this, which can then be used to form the basis of a stock assessment methodology as the industry expands. The second is to develop harvest methodologies that allow for the recovery of local stocks, and which can be used to inform rotational harvest strategies by documenting how long recovery takes. The third is to develop an understanding of some of the biosecurity issues likely to be faced by industry and regulators, which will allow managers to make informed decisions around translocation policies to both prevent the spread of disease, and to maintain the genetic integrity of natural populations.