22 results

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
TAGS
Wild Catch
Recreational Fishing
Rac Wa
Marine Plastics
Environmental Impact

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.
Adoption
Environment

Status of Australian Fish Stocks (SAFS) reports 2020, and further development of the SAFS production and dissemination system

Project number: 2019-149
Project Status:
Current
Budget expenditure: $1,385,631.49
Principal Investigator: Toby P. Piddocke
Organisation: Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC)
Project start/end date: 14 Nov 2019 - 29 Jun 2021
Contact:
FRDC
TAGS
Stock Assessment
Fisheries Management
Data

Need

The current application is to produce the SAFS reports in 2020 and address strategic issues outlined above. In order to ensure the continuation of SAFS beyond 2020, it is essential for jurisdictions to develop ownership of the reports and to embed SAFS processes in core business, and for efficiencies in production and report management to continue to progress. A parallel project to develop jurisdictional reporting services is also underway to assist jurisdiction develop their jurisdictional chapters. As documented in the independent audit of SAFS 2016 (FRDC project 2016-143), the process of compiling SAFS on a co-operative basis between FRDC, Australian government agencies and all fisheries jurisdictions has led to greater joint collaboration, as well as transfers of methodologies and processes, to deliver higher quality and more credible stock status reporting which can be accessed nationally and internationally, as well as assisting in policy decisions regarding changes to particular fisheries management arrangements and in research priorities. Primary drivers for National reporting of the SAFS include: (i) the State of the Environment Report 2011, i.e., ‘lack of a nationally integrated approach inhibits effective marine management’; (ii) a recommendation of the House of Representatives Inquiry into the Role of Science for Fisheries and Aquaculture (Netting the Benefits Report 2012), i.e., ‘producing national status report regularly’; (iii) the Australian Fisheries Management Forum national statement of intent, i.e. a key outcome of ‘Goal 1’ is the National Status of Australian Fish Stocks Report; (iv) the National Fishing and Aquaculture Strategy 2015–20, i.e., ‘Goal 1’ of this strategy will be partially measured by an increased number of fisheries assessed as environmentally sustainable in the Status of Australian Fish Stocks Reports (this includes reducing the number of stocks assessed as uncertain); (v) the FRDC RD&E Plan 2015–20, i.e., key targets for deliverables against National Priority One include (i) “Increase the number of species to 200 in the national Status of Australian Fish Stocks Reports” and (ii) “Reduce the number of species classified as ‘undefined’ from the current figure of approximately

Objectives

1. Continue to develop a set of robust and consistent national stock status reports and a strong sense of report ownership by jurisdictions
2. To produce a fifth edition of the SAFS reports in 2020
3. Increase the number of species in SAFS to provide a comprehensive coverage of species of interest to stakeholder groups that will refer to the reports for information on sustainability and management success.
4. Reduction in the number (percentage) of species classified as 'undefined' where possible using data-poor assessment methodology
Environment
Communities
Industry

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
TAGS
Artificial Intelligence

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.
Adoption
Industry
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