70 results

Fisheries and Aquaculture production statistics

Project number: 2024-096
Project Status:
Current
Budget expenditure: $140,875.00
Principal Investigator: Anders Magnusson
Organisation: BDO EconSearch
Project start/end date: 10 May 2025 - 9 Nov 2025
Contact:
FRDC
TAGS

Need

This project involves a comprehensive review and enhancement of valuation methodologies for production statistics in the commercial fisheries and aquaculture sectors. Phase One focuses on comparing existing approaches from various publications, evaluating their strengths and weaknesses, and recommending the most suitable methodologies for future reporting. The recommendations must be realistic given the practical constraints and opportunities in different jurisdictions, which the study captures through document review and interviews with jurisdictional representatives. Phase One concludes in a detailed report summarising the findings and recommendations.

Phase Two, contingent on FRDC's decision to proceed, involves producing detailed production statistics for the 2021/22 to 2023/24 period. This includes gathering and compiling data from eight jurisdictional management agencies, ensuring data quality and consistency (identifying gaps where this is not met), documenting sources and methodologies, and presenting the data in a clear, machine-readable format. The data will be disaggregated by sector, state, and species (where possible) (including those covered in FRDC’s Industry Partnership Agreements), providing a comprehensive overview of the commercial fisheries and aquaculture sectors.

Objectives

1. To review valuation methodologies for production statistics and recommend improvements in methodology.
2. To demonstrate methodology improvements through producing production statistics for 2021/22 to 2023/24 for commercial fisheries and aquaculture sectors.
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Exploring semantic search and linking technologies for application on GrowAG platform

Project number: 2024-049
Project Status:
Current
Budget expenditure: $0.00
Principal Investigator: Alex Bundock
Organisation: AgriFutures Australia
Project start/end date: 28 Feb 2025 - 30 Sep 2025
Contact:
FRDC

Need

AgriFutures growᴬᴳ⋅ is the platform for Australian and global agrifood innovation. Explore research, technology, and commercialisation opportunities in one place. Connect with a diverse ecosystem including researchers, investors, and startups and discover funding avenues, list projects, and engage with over 400 organisations.

Agricultural research is vital for ensuring food security, sustainable farming practices, and rural development. AgriFutures growAG. involves collaboration between the Department of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry (DAFF) and Australia’s 15 Research & Development Corporations (RDCs), collating details on the vast rural RDC investment landscape. Collation of project details on growᴬᴳ is currently a manual, keyword-based tagging system that suffers from limitations:
- Limited Semantic Understanding: Keywords often fail to capture the nuanced relationships between projects, leading to fragmented information retrieval.
- Scalability Issues: Manual tagging is time-consuming and prone to inconsistencies, hindering efficient data management as the database grows.
- Lack of Interoperability: The current system lacks the ability to seamlessly integrate with other agricultural datasets and knowledge bases.
This project proposes to develop an AI-driven solution for semantically linking agricultural research projects, enabling more accurate and comprehensive project navigation and knowledge discovery. By leveraging Natural Language Processing (NLP) and knowledge graph technologies, we aim to transform the current keyword-based system into a dynamic and interconnected knowledge repository.

Objectives

1. Provide seamless ingestion of RDC data onto the platform including automation, providing projectsummaries and tagging.
2. Facilitate advanced semantic search and exploration through the integration of AI and data visualisation techniques.
3. Provide a value add for the ecosystem, partners, and visitors by being able to query the underlying growAG data set and better understand potential opportunities and trends.

National Recreational Fishing Forum Series (2025-2029)

Project number: 2024-048
Project Status:
Current
Budget expenditure: $300,000.00
Principal Investigator: Cassie Price
Organisation: Australian Recreational Fishing Foundation (ARFF)
Project start/end date: 27 Mar 2025 - 31 Aug 2029
Contact:
FRDC

Need

ARFF proposes to run a 1-day National Recreational Fishing Forum on Tuesday 22nd July 2025. With the set up and additional meetings around recreational fishing to be held on Wed 23rd, the AFTA Trade Show held on Thurs 24th, Fri 25th and Saturday 26th. Allowing participants to travel to the event on Monday 21st and home on Sunday 27th (if not prior). Followed by Annual events in the two years following.

Target Audience/s – Leaders in recreational fishing sector, future leaders of recreational fishing sector, key leaders of other fishing sectors (commercial wild and indigenous), decision makers in governments/departments relevant to recreational fishing. We expect between 150-300 participants.

ARFF will engage a conference organising agency (preferred proposal attached) on the Gold Coast, and set up a forum organising committee from their broader membership. Together they will;
- Determine the logistics of the location and set up, and alignment with AFTA events
- Set up online information and registration
- Promote broadly to recreational fishing groups, peak bodies and recreational fishers
- Determine a program, themes/topics and call for speakers
- Run the event smoothly including all pre event and post event logistics

FRDC will have the opportunity to receive,
- A place on the organising committee
- A mutually agreed number of complimentary registrations
- Any signage provided by FRDC for the forum on stage or at strategic meeting places in the forum break-out/gathering areas
- Logo on all materials, both hard copy and digital including conference website
- Ability to promote the event

FRDC Fish Tank: building the research communities capability and capacity (Seafood Directions 2024/2026)

Project number: 2023-170
Project Status:
Current
Budget expenditure: $65,000.00
Principal Investigator: Sue Rana
Organisation: Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC)
Project start/end date: 23 Apr 2024 - 7 Feb 2027
Contact:
FRDC

Need

The FRDC Communications team has identified a need to engage with our research partners in more frequent and positive ways. Through discussions between FRDC's research and investment team and FRDC's stakeholder engagement team, it was decided that Seafood Directions 2024 and 2026 provided an excellent opportunity as an event platform to engage with our research partners to build capability and capacity.

EVENT
The FRDC FishTank campaign has been created to help researchers undertaking FRDC projects communicate their research outputs in creative and engaging ways. The FishTank campaign will encourage our research partners to think more deeply about the way they communicate their research and provide training for them to develop engaging and creative research presentations that will be delivered at Seafood Directions 2024. The costs of the FishTank campaign will be covered by FRDC and include professional presentation training by Scientell to advance the finalists’ research communications skills in unique and innovative ways. The aim of this project is to help researchers develop innovative presentations that will boost audience engagement and help extend the research to other relevant audiences, after Seafood Directions. In discussion and agreement with the FRDC Research Portfolio Managers, FRDC FishTank finalists may be able to use their Seafood Directions FishTank presentation to replace a milestone report from their FRDC Project.

The FishTank campaign will help build communication capability and capacity to enable change in the way research is presented and perceived. Participants supported by a 2024 Seafood Directions bursary or similar (including NSILP, ARLP, or Nuffield) will not be eligible to receive travel assistance via this project. Recipients of a 2024 FishTank bursary will not be eligible for 2026 FishTank bursaries.

PROCESS
Prior to the FishTank campaign being announced, an EDM (see EDM and other communication outputs in attached Strategic Plan Seafood Directions 2024 FRDC FishTank), will be sent to all FRDC current Principal Investigators, inviting them to submit a pitch video to FRDC for a chance to be part of this project. The EDM will outline the pitch video requirements, i.e. Researchers to provide a 3 to 5-minute ‘mock-up’ presentation pitch, which showcases at least three different innovative and creative communication executions (e.g. pictures, video, animations, props).

The group of individuals who can assess all applications throughout the entire process includes:
- Crispian Ashby (GM Research and Investment)
- Chris Izzo (Senior Research Portfolio Manager)
- Deepika Satchithananthan (Research Portfolio Manager)
- Ben Jones (Research Portfolio Manager)
- Kylie Dunstan (GM Stakeholder Engagement)
- Sally Roberts (C&C Portfolio Manager)
- Sue Rana (Corporate Affairs Manager)

PI’s will have four weeks from the first EDM being sent out to submit their applications. The selection panel will have two weeks to assess all applications. All applicants will be notified if they were successful or not. FRDC’s Managing Director, Patrick Hone, may also record a video snippet, that could be attached and promoted to PIs through the EDM. This could be part of two follow-up EDM’s sent prior to the public FishTank campaign announcement.

PROCESS FOR FRDC FISHTANK FINALISTS
After assessing and determining the six successful pitches, applicants will be notified followed by a an EDM outlining:
- Allocated budget $4,000 pp (up to $2,000 AUD for travel/accommodation & $2,000 AUD for materials)
- Training information (who the provider is, the dates & the format [online or in-person] - PI’s will be given 4 weeks to do this training.
- The email will also provide instructions on how to finalise their successful bursary application in fishnet. Each researcher will enter into an individual bursary agreement, so that FRDC can pay their bursary.

The bursary agreement will also stipulate that successful researchers will engage with bursary finalists for 12 months after Seafood Directions to provide guidance on future similar initiatives.

TRAINING INFORMATION
Principal Investigators will be asked to work with Scientell to complete a science presentation training program. This offer can be extended to a member of the PI’s project team. However, if they extend this offer to a project team member only this person can present as a finalist at FRDC FishTank. A PI and a research team member cannot BOTH complete the training, it can only be undertaken by one person within a project team.

BUDGET SUMMARY
Accommodation and travel up to $2,000 x 6 = $12,000
Material Cost up to $2,000 x 6 = $12,000
Training budget = $6,000
Contingency (~8-10%) = $2,500
Budget = $32,500 per event (SD 2024 and SD 2026 - 2 total)

NOTE: see a more in-depth plan and link to all communication outputs in an attached document to this application, called Strategic Plan Seafood Directions 2024 FRDC FishTank

Objectives

1. Build presentation capability and creative outlets of and for the FRDC's research community
2. increase engagement with our research partners to help bring our investment portfolio to life
3. increase stakeholder awareness of FRDC’s research portfolio and outcomes through innovative and creative ways
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Establishing a national end of life fishing/aquaculture gear recovery system for Australia

Project number: 2023-124
Project Status:
Current
Budget expenditure: $273,080.00
Principal Investigator: Anissa Lawrence
Organisation: TierraMar Ltd trading as Ocean Earth Foundation
Project start/end date: 29 Sep 2024 - 29 Jun 2026
Contact:
FRDC

Need

Building on the circularity discussions and work being undertaken by FRDC and the industry, this project seeks to undertake the legwork required to establish a nationwide on-demand End of life (EOL) fishing gear recovery system for Australia and pilot it in key locations. The materials that many nets and ropes are made of are highly valuable and recyclable and in fact in many other countries, is already being recycled or remanufactured. Until now, having a national system has been cost prohibitive due to the large distances and need for economies of scale and limited local buyer interest. As a part of the national targets set by the Australian Government relating to plastics use and recycling, commercial fishing and aquaculture sectors have been exploring how to move to a circular economy model and reduce plastic inputs through a variety of projects run by FRDC and others. However, with fishing gear the biggest plastic polymer input, and contamination challenges, there has yet to be a suitable system established.

This project seeks to enable the opportunities that addressing EOL gear provides in Australia to the commercial fishing and aquaculture sector through the establishment of an effective EOL fishing gear recovery system for the country to reduce the landfill costs to industry. It seeks to build on the learnings from previous projects as well as the ten years of experience of our partner Bureo has in in operating an EOL fishing gear recovery program. Bureo currently have an EOL gear recovery system active in 9 countries.

The key objectives are:
● By the end of 2026 there is an effective end-of-life fishing/aquaculture gear recovery system implemented across key fishing ports, and key aquaculture centres benefiting regional communities and fisheries conservation and assisting the Australian Government to address plastic recovery/recycling targets.
● By the end of 2024, the enabling environment for an effective and fit for purpose EOL fishing/aquaculture gear recovery system is in place within Australia, with commencement of recycling underway in key pilot locations.

Objectives

1. By March 2025 the feasibility of and logistical requirements are understood to establish a national end of life recovery system for commercial fishing and aquaculture gear in Australia and an enabling pathway for roll out created.
2. By the end of 2026 there is an effective end-of-life fishing/aquaculture gear recovery system for Australia implemented across at least 5 key fishing ports, with measurable benefits being delivered to regional communities, industry, conservation, while contributing towards the Australian Government’s recycling targets.
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