The Department of Agriculture and Water Resources is seeking expressions of interest for the revision of the following AQUAVETPLAN Operational Procedures manuals:
1. Decontamination
2. Disposal
The Australian Aquatic Veterinary Emergency Plan (AQUAVETPLAN) is a series of manuals that outline Australia’s approach to national disease preparedness and propose the technical response and control strategies to be activated in a national aquatic animal disease emergency.

The Decontamination manual was first published in 2008, and the second version of the Disposal manual was published in 2009. Both manuals require revision to reflect new scientific knowledge, and to ensure that decontamination and disposal procedures used for disease control purposes reflect current ‘best-practice’ approaches.

Expressions of interest were sought by DAWR.
The Department of Agriculture and Water Resources (the Department) is seeking expressions of interest for the development of a mobile application for the ‘Aquatic Animal Diseases Significant to Australia: Identification Field Guide’ (Department of Agriculture 2012).
The Aquatic animal diseases significant to Australia: Identification field guide (the Field Guide) is a key resource for raising awareness of important aquatic animal diseases and encouraging reporting of disease incidents to responsible authorities. The field guide provides guidance for commercial fishers, aquaculture workers, recreational fishers, biosecurity staff and scientists on how to recognise and report significant aquatic animal diseases.
The Department is seeking expressions for suitably qualified parties to make the field guide available as a mobile application (Android, Windows and iOS platforms). The application for mobile devices aims to increase accessibility of the field guide for field use and to incorporate user-friendly mechanisms for reporting of suspected aquatic animal disease events.

Development of an environmental standard for fishing tournaments has been seen by all stakeholders as an opportunity to enhance and promote the sustainability of recreational fishing by proactively addressing possible sustainability issues for larger tournaments as well as fish welfare issues which are beginning to be directed towards the recreational fishing industry more frequently, particularly in catch and release fishing tournaments. When Recfish originally developed the conceptual outline of a national environmental standard for fishing tournaments, they envisaged this process would take around 2 years to develop the system, and after that some 3 to 5 more years for it to gain wide acceptance. Now that the NEATFish standard has been developed after 2 years, the most crucial aspect of its implementation and extension must now begin in earnest. Feedback from industry during its development suggests that the major challenge for the concept will be to create a better awareness of NEATFish and what it has to offer clubs and other bodies. The process of awareness raising will involve development of a website, promotional materials, and a profile for NEATFish in the fishing media and at various industry events, including tackle shows and conferences. Given the need for significant capital outlay to develop a website and other materials to implement and publicise NEATFish, there is a need for immediate additional funding from the FRDC in order to maintain momentum and ensure ultimate success. To do so we wish to utilise unused monies left over from savings made during the previous project (Crispian Ashby has been made aware of the magnitude of these savings) together with additional funding in order to drive the project down the path of commercialisation.