39 results
Adoption
PROJECT NUMBER • 2020-040
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Aquatic animal welfare – a review of guidance documents and legislation

This report provides a contemporary review of aquatic animal welfare in Australia, focussing on fish, crustaceans and cephalopods that are captured or farmed in the commercial wild capture, aquaculture and recreational fishing sectors in Australia. It also reviews the welfare of aquatic animals used...
ORGANISATION:
Panaquatic Health Solutions Pty Ltd

Practicing aquatic animal welfare: Identifying and mitigating obstacles to uptake and adoption by the Australian Fishing Industry

Project number: 2019-023
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $100,100.00
Principal Investigator: Nicki Mazur
Organisation: ENVision Environmental Consulting
Project start/end date: 1 Dec 2019 - 14 Dec 2020
Contact:
FRDC

Need

Recent research shows general public support for Australia’s fishing industry (Sparks 2017; Voyer et al 2016) that depends on people’s assessments of industry’s commitment to implement best practice and demonstration of being effective environmental stewards (Mazur et al 2014). The FRDC has recognised external pressure for the fishing industry to move beyond compliance with environmental and other regulations and improve its performance in key areas, including animal welfare. As noted above, the FRDC has provided support for a range of research and industry initiatives to achieve positive aquatic animal welfare outcomes. The FRDC also recognises that further improvement to the seafood industry’s aquatic animal welfare practices are required.

Recent FRDC project investments has produced valuable knowledge about how when change is called for it is very important to recognise that multiple factors influence – positively and/or negatively - people’s decisions to take up those new, innovative, and/or different practices (i.e. 2017-133, 2017-046, 2017-221). These factors typically include personal values and belief systems, access to different kinds of resources required to make changes, particular features of the recommended practices, as well as a range of macro-levels factors that while they may be outside of people’s direct control still affect their choices. FRDC Project 2017-133 generated important insights about how and to what extent these kinds of factors have been keeping the seafood industry from making more substantive progress towards building greater stakeholder and community trust (Mazur & Brooks 2018).

Further work of this nature is now needed to shed greater light on aquatic animal welfare in the seafood industry (FRDC 2017-221). In particular the research should be focused on identifying the particular features of ‘best care’ for aquatic animals, the range of factors that may be obstructing industry members’ use of those practices, and examples of recent (extension) initiatives used to encourage better aquatic animal welfare.

Objectives

1. Identifying best practice in (aquatic) animal welfare.
2. Identify the extent to which fishers and finfish aquaculture farms are applying best practice in Australia
3. Identify factors impeding the uptake and adoption of a selection of recommended aquatic animal welfare practices in wild-catch commercial fishing and finfish aquaculture
4. Identify appropriate strategies to mitigate obstacles to improved uptake and adoption of those recommended practices
5. Help build the Australian fishing industry's capacity to design and implement extension programs, especially those targeting increased uptake and adoption of recommended aquatic animal welfare practices
6. Contribute to increased likelihood of more widespread and enduring practice-change in the seafood industry's aquatic animal welfare practices in wild-catch commercial fishing and finfish aquaculture

Final report

Author: Dr. Nicole (Nicki) Mazur and Mr Andy Bodsworth
Final Report • 2022-03-31 • 1.78 MB
2019-023-DLD.pdf

Summary

This FRDC funded research  focuses on the obstacles to, and drivers of, positive practice change relating to aquatic animal welfare (AAW) in Australia’s wild-catch commercial fishing and finfish aquaculture sectors. It was conducted between December 2019 and March 2022 in response to growing societal expectations that production animals, including fish and crustaceans, be treated humanely ; and the need to understand how the Australian seafood industry can, and should, respond. 

A mixed-method approach was used to collect data and information for this research. These included a desk-top review, stakeholder consultation, and a set of interviews. 

This Project identified a range of AAW practices used by some seafood producers that they believed to be ‘humane’. The Project also identified some factors enabling and impeding seafood producers’ approaches. Key factors supporting AAW uptake and adoption included a seafood producers’ openness to change and interest in learning, the relative advantages of using recommended practices, well designed and resourced extension, and positive relationships across industry, government and interest group networks. 

This Project provides highly useful insights about AAW practices used by a small sample of Australian seafood industry members, which were primarily representatives of the wild-catch commercial fishing sector with two from the finfish aquaculture sector. This project’s findings support results from other recent Australian seafood industry research and policy initiatives, which have found that more appropriately designed and consistently-funded extension programs can help improve AAW uptake and adoption. However, AAW is a complex issue, and requires more than just extension.  A range of carefully conceived and integrated policy instruments (e.g., market instruments, regulations) are needed to achieve substantive and lasting AAW practice change. Five recommendations have been formulated to help amplify enablers of and mitigate obstacles to AAW uptake and adoption. Suggested next steps include a workshop to draw out policy and industry-led options to enhance adoption, including feasibility of a risk assessment; and a case studies to test risk assessment and options to improve adoption.
People

Aquatic Animal Health Technical Forum and Training workshops

Project number: 2018-144
Project Status:
Current
Budget expenditure: $78,000.00
Principal Investigator: David Cummins
Organisation: CSIRO Australian Animal Health Laboratory
Project start/end date: 29 Nov 2018 - 29 Nov 2021
Contact:
FRDC

Need

There is a need to continue the workshops as they provide a forum for representatives from research institutes, Government departments and industry to discuss current aquatic animal health issues facing Australia in a friendly and collaborative setting that encourages open and frank interactions leading to improved mutual understanding of issues facing the different sectors. Workshops have been well supported and have included participants from Government and private laboratories and the aquaculture industry. Industry participants have been from a diversity of farms and representative of a wide variety of aquaculture species. The participant numbers have increased at each workshop from 17 to 35- ideally the maximum group size of 35. This maximum number allows the workshop to be conducted at various locations, as it is not too large a group for host facilities to accommodate.
Previous workshops have led to the exchange of information and methods. This has provided ongoing contacts established at the workshops, for participants to discuss issues, and in turn, respond more effectively to disease outbreaks. With aquaculture facilities and the species farmed continuing to expand in Australia, transferring these vital skills and knowledge to a new generation of researches and those involved in aquatic animal health, will be of benefit to both the aquatic animal health sector and industries.
Due to budgetary constraints in both Government and industry sectors, funding is required to assist workshop participants with travel expenses to attend the workshops. Without partial travel subsidy many forum participants would not obtain authorization to participate. This has repeatedly been raised in feedback and would affect attendance.

The exchange of information and pathways for new people involved in aquatic animal health will be lost and need to be re-established if the workshops fail to continue on an annual basis.

Objectives

1. Source workshop venues, in various States and Territories, that have aquatic animal health capability or services and can accommodate the group size.
2. Organise all aspects of conducting the workshops including
advertising through Health Highlights subscription and peer referrals, guest presenter, presentation program, field trips and practical sessions, accommodation and catering.
3. Encourage new and emerging science and production staff to attend the AAHTF and to gain experience in making presentations
4. Continue to update the contact list and email distribution list/group for continued information exchange
5. Reports and financial acquittals prepared according to milestone schedule.
People

Development of resources and equipment to enable best practice in the humane dispatch of sharks caught by commercial fishers in the NT

Project number: 2022-028
Project Status:
Current
Budget expenditure: $148,400.00
Principal Investigator: Ben Diggles
Organisation: DigsFish Services Pty Ltd
Project start/end date: 31 Dec 2022 - 29 Dec 2023
Contact:
FRDC

Need

The so called pragmatic approach to the welfare of aquatic animals (Arlinghaus et al. 2007) measures welfare status using a variety of well-established, un-controversial physiological and functional parameters (Rose et al. 2014, Browman et al. 2019). For example, all finfish, crustaceans and cephalopods can experience stress, which can lead to poor welfare outcomes (Rose et al. 2014). From an animal welfare perspective, the overall aim to maximise fish welfare during capture is to minimise stress within the constraint of practices inherent to the relevant fishing sector (Mazur and Bodsworth 2022).
Using this pragmatic approach, the Aquatic Animal Welfare Working Group (AAWWG) which was formed under the Australian Animal Welfare Strategy (AAWS, 2005-2014), developed a range of Overarching Welfare Principles which related to finfish harvested from the wild in commercial fishing industries.
Out of the eight Overarching Principles developed by the AAWWG, as pointed out by Mazur and Bodsworth (2022) the three that are most relevant to the commercial wild harvest industry are:
1. Timely handling from capture to death is essential to minimise stress;
2. Capture methods should be designed to minimise the capture of unwanted species
3. Any fish selected for harvest should be killed as rapidly as possible, by humane means suitable for the species.
To address the legislative issues under the new Act, meet current and future fish welfare challenges, and maintain their social license to fish, commercial fishers targeting sharks in the NT need to develop workable and effective standards for handling and dispatching sharks which can be recognised and prescribed under the new Regulations.
Since shark fisheries are specialist fisheries which were not covered by the AAWWG during the AAWS, there is a need to develop specific resources to assist the industry with humane dispatch of sharks.
Science shows that brain destruction by pithing or “iki-jime” is the fastest way to dispatch finfish, resulting in the lowest levels of stress and maximising the quality and shelf life of the resulting fish product (Poli et al. 2005, Diggles 2015). However, the brains of sharks are small and vary in location between species, which is why this project is being proposed and is necessary to determine the brain location of the sharks most commonly captured in the NT shark fishery, and then examine various methods of rapidly destroying the brain, in order to develop guidelines and best practice protocols for their humane dispatch. Importantly, it should be noted that this is an industry driven project.

References

Arlinghaus R, Cooke SJ, Schwab A, Cowx IG (2007). Fish welfare: A challenge to the feelings based approach, with implications for recreational fishing. Fish and Fisheries 8: 57-71.

Browman HI, Cooke SJ, Cowx IG, Derbyshire SWG, Kasumyan A, Key B, Rose JD, Schwab A, Skiftesvik AB, Stevens ED, Watson CA, Arlinghaus R (2019). Welfare of aquatic animals: where things are, where they are going, and what it means for research, aquaculture, recreational angling, and commercial fishing. ICES Journal of Marine Science 76: 82–92. doi:10.1093/icesjms/fsy067

Diggles BK (2015). Development of resources to promote best practice in the humane dispatch of finfish caught by recreational fishers. Fisheries Management and Ecology DOI: 10.1111/fme.12127

Mazur N, Bodsworth A (2022). Practicing aquatic animal welfare: Identifying and mitigating obstacles to uptake and adoption by the Australian Seafood Industry. Final Report for FRDC Project No 2019-023, March 2022. 60 pgs.

Poli BM, Parisi G, Scappini F, Zampacavallo G (2005). Fish welfare and quality as affected by presaughter and slaughter management. Aquaculture International 13: 29-49.

Rose JD, Arlinghaus R, Cooke SJ, Diggles BK, Sawynok W, Stevens ED, Wynne CD (2014). Can fish really feel pain? Fish and Fisheries 15: 97–133.

Objectives

1. Obtain all relevant permits. Review of literature (primary and grey) and current NT industry practice to inform Objective 2.
2. Collect at least 3 representative specimens (small, medium large) of each of the main shark species (up to 12) encountered by the commercial fishing industry in the Northern Territory (NT), and precisely identify their anatomical brain location.
3. Assess the effectiveness of various different tools and techniques for dispatch of small and large sharks (percussive stunning (blunt trauma inflicted using a baseball bat) vs spinal section vs shooting vs pneumatic captive bolt gun vs cartridge powered captive bolt gun vs spring loaded captive bolt gun vs (depending on OH&S requirements) electrical stunning.
4. Update the existing code(s) of practice adopted by the commercial fishing industry in the NT to include the best practice information on dispatch of sharks as prescribed under the new Regulations (Animal Protection Act 2018 (‘the new Act’) and the Animal Protection Regulations 2020 ‘the new Regulations’ in the NT.
5. Update existing electronic extension resources (www.ikijime.com, Ikijime Tool phone applications) to include the new information on location of shark brains.
6. Extend this information to the commercial fishing industries in the NT.
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