66 results
Industry
PROJECT NUMBER • 2018-121
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Sex reversal and sex differentiation in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar)

The Tasmanian Atlantic Salmon (Salmo salar) aquaculture industry strives to produce all-female fish, as male Atlantic Salmon are subject to precocious maturation and consequently reduced flesh quality and increased disease susceptibility when reared in high water temperatures. Several fish species,...
ORGANISATION:
Deakin University Warrnambool Campus
Environment
PROJECT NUMBER • 2014-028
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Mud cockle (Katelysia spp.) stock enhancement/restoration: practical implementation and policy evaluation

This study was conducted to restore the Mud Cockle population in the Section Bank of Port River, South Australia, which had drastically decreased due to commercial fishing. Mud Cockles are important not only for commercial purposes but also for stabilizing sediment and reducing turbidity in the...
ORGANISATION:
SARDI Food Safety and Innovation
SPECIES

Fishing and Aquaculture Workforce Capability Framework

Project number: 2022-153
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $127,997.50
Principal Investigator: Deborah C. Prentice
Organisation: RM Consulting Group (RMCG)
Project start/end date: 2 May 2023 - 7 Mar 2024
Contact:
FRDC

Need

The objective of this foundational work is to collaborate with industry to produce a Fishing and Aquaculture Workforce Capability Framework. The Framework will be used by fishing and aquaculture sectors / communities for workforce planning and career mapping. It will support a more strategic and consistent approach to workforce planning. This in turn, will enable industry to build its capacity through better understanding of capability needs.

In addition to the universal challenges associated with a tight labour market (e.g. attracting people, barriers to entry, addressing skills needs), the industry is operating in a changing environment. Other challenges and opportunities for the fishing and aquaculture sectors include:
• Adapting to climate change
• Biosecurity
• Managing resources efficiently
• Meeting sustainability standards / social license to operate
• Moving to a circular economy
• Managing global supply chains (developing traceability, addressing counterfeit)
• Competing with other proteins
• New markets through free trade agreements
• Adopting digital technology, and;
• Attracting and retaining people to drive responses to changes that impact on the F&A community.

The AgriFood Supply Chain Resilience report (KPMG, 2022) identified ‘labour supply, wellbeing and succession’ as one of the significant stresses for seafood supply chains. Other significant stresses were weather and climate change, cold chain and freight space availability, sustainability and social licence, pests and disease and market access.

Fish Forever (2030 vision for Australia’s fishing and aquaculture community) highlights opportunities for the F&A community and contains outcomes under each of the following missions:
1. Growth for enduring prosperity
2. Best practices and production systems
3. A culture that is inclusive and forward thinking
4. Equitable and secure resource access
5. Society and consumers trust, respect and value.

This project will identify the capability needs (current and future) to address these challenges and opportunities. Further, it will support industry, to attract and retain people and to provide pathways to build capability. Sectors will be better informed as to how to address capability needs.

Addressing these needs will ensure industry is better equipped to respond to changes, challenges and opportunities that impact the fishing and aquaculture communities. The fishing and aquaculture map (FRDC website) highlights the “complex systems behind Indigenous, commercial and recreational fishing and aquaculture in Australia and how the elements are connected”. It also highlights how issues or events in one part of the system can have impacts on other sectors. Therefore, industry needs to be prepared for changes.

This project will engage with all key F&A sectors to ensure the capability framework is industry-driven and collectively owned. In addition, the project approach is designed to utilise existing sector/industry plans and not replace existing frameworks. RMCG will work collaboratively with industry.

Objectives

1. Development of a fit-for-purpose capability framework for the fisheries and aquaculture industries and individual organisations
2. Engagement and collaboration with key industry stakeholders to enable adoption and use of the framework
3. Establishment of a shared process and terminology for talking about capabilities throughout the fishing and aquaculture industry
4. Mapped critical capabilities highlighting gaps and opportunities for collaborative action

Final report

Authors: Deborah Prentice Sasha Brightman Natasha Frazer and Anne-Maree Boland
Final Report • 2024-06-01 • 14.11 MB
2022-153-DLD.pdf

Summary

In 2023 RM Consulting Group (RMCG) was contracted by FRDC to develop a Fisheries and Aquaculture (F&A) Workforce Capability Framework (hereafter referred to as the Framework) that would be used as a high-level, standardised tool across all F&A sectors. The FRDC and other groups in leadership roles for Australia’s F&A sectors have highlighted workforce development as a key opportunity and priority.
We have created a comprehensive Framework that captures the enablers (the internal and external systems and culture that either help or hinder employees and businesses to thrive and support growth in people’s capability) and the people capabilities (knowledge, skills, abilities and behaviours) that should be considered as a starting point in F&A workforce planning.
The intention of this project was to collaborate with industry to produce a F&A Workforce Capability Framework. This has been achieved, as demonstrated through the many and diverse stakeholders engaged and the attached Framework. The stakeholders interviewed and engaged had some interest and/or experience in workforce issues so were able to add value to the development of the Framework. They will also be able to champion the subsequent  implementation of projects that emerge from the Framework.
The Framework is a step towards addressing the above challenges and opportunities. It provides a broad, high-level approach to thinking about how to  meet the needs and aspirations of businesses and organisations.
The case studies included in this document offer real-world examples of where innovative thinking has been used to solve issues around workforce  planning, attraction and retention of staff, and broader geographical and social challenges.
The research and the development of this Framework emphasises the need to think differently, innovate and enable collaboration.

Project products

Communities
PROJECT NUMBER • 2016-400
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Sustainable Fishing Families: Developing industry human capital through health, wellbeing, safety and resilience

This project conducted the first national survey of the health, safety and wellbeing of the Australian professional fishing industry in 2017. The results of the survey provide a baseline for the state of the wild-catch industry members across a range of indicators, including reported physical and...
ORGANISATION:
Deakin University Geelong Waterfront Campus
Industry
PROJECT NUMBER • 2017-117
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Identification of differentially expressed innate immune genes in the New Zealand paua (Haliotis iris) and the Australian hybrid abalone (H. laevigata X H. rubra) upon immersion challenge with the abalone herpesvirus-1 (HaHV)

This project was carried out by scientists from AAHL CSIRO (Dr Serge Corbeil) and from LaTrobe University (Drs Karla Helbig and Subir Sarker). After discovering the existence of an abalone species (Päua - Haliotis iris) resistant to AVG our research team based in Geelong and Melbourne...
ORGANISATION:
CSIRO Australian Animal Health Laboratory
Environment
PROJECT NUMBER • 2017-109
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Development of Fish Health Indicators for the Gladstone Harbour Report Card

As the link between land and sea environments, estuaries are complex ecosystems vulnerable to human impacts, which directly and indirectly affect plants and animals, including fish. Fish are key biological indicators of environmental contamination, as they are water breathers, common in aquatic...
ORGANISATION:
CQUniversity (CQU) Gladstone

National Social and Economic Survey of Recreational Fishers 2019

Project number: 2018-161
Project Status:
Current
Budget expenditure: $1,233,986.95
Principal Investigator: Andy (Anthony) Moore
Organisation: University of Canberra
Project start/end date: 3 Mar 2019 - 19 Jun 2021
Contact:
FRDC

Need

Currently there is a lack of national scale, consistent and robust data on the motivations and behaviours of recreational fishers, and lack of robust data on the social and economic contribution of recreational fishing. Where many commercial fisheries have regular collection and estimation process for economic data, this is not the case for recreational fishing in most of Australia. This lack of data also includes behaviour and motivations and how they are changing. These data are useful for informing discussions on resource allocation and in understanding and managing recreational fisheries more generally. If these data are to be used to inform governments and the general public, there is a need to make sure it is collected in a robust way that is representative of the Australian population. Large scale representative data sets are often expensive to acquire and as a result do not get undertaken regularly. One off surveys only provide useful data for any particular point in time, but understanding trends can often be more useful. This study aims to implement and test methodologies to provide a robust and representative sample, while trying to reduce costs to allow for more regular data gathering. To do this requires addressing another need: that of testing new survey methodologies for collecting data from recreational fishers that enables assessment of social and economic contribution. Recreational fishing surveys traditionally use probability based phone or mail surveys, however both methods are experiencing rapid decline in response rates and representativeness. It is expected that going into the future, online surveys that use a range of appropriate recruitment methods will be the most common survey method. There is a need to invest in establishing robust approaches to using these methods, and in understanding how their findings differ to those of traditional probability based surveys.

Objectives

1. Assess social and economic contribution of recreational fishing using multiple methods, including direct and flow-on economic benefits, and market and non-market benefits
2. Identify which approaches to recruiting survey participants and completing surveys produce the most representative and robust results
3. Recommend most appropriate and cost effective survey method to use to track change social and economic aspects of recreational fishing in Australia over time

Final report

Authors: Moore A Schirmer J Magnusson A Keller K Hinten G Galeano D Woodhams J Wright D Maloney L. Dix A.
Final Report • 2023-02-21 • 5.80 MB
2018-161-NRFS_main report_FINAL_19Feb2023.pdf

Summary

The NRFS involved three stages of data collection. An overview of the three stages of data collection and the purpose of each, and a guide summarising which chapters draw on data from each stage of data collection, are provided in the next section. Sections 3.4, 3.5 and 3.6 provide a detailed description of the methods used to collect and process data in Stages 1, 2 and 3 respectively. These sections explain, for each stage:
  • The purpose/objectives of data collection
  • Data collection methods, including design of survey instruments and survey recruitment materials, survey sample recruitment methods and sample achieved
  • Data processing methods, including data coding and cleaning, and weighting methods.

Project products

Report • 2023-06-05 • 481.14 KB
2018-161-FRDC-report-Bait-and-Berley-FINAL.pdf

Summary

The outbreak of white spot disease, caused by white spot syndrome virus (WSSV) (Whispovirus sp.), in South-East Queensland (Qld) in 2016–17, the recognition of new and emerging diseases, and advances in scientific knowledge since the release of the Generic import risk analysis report for prawns and prawn products 2009 (the Prawn IRA; Biosecurity Australia 2009) highlighted the need to review the biosecurity risks of prawns imported into Australia (the prawn review).

 

The Prawn IRA 2009 considered that the regular introduction of imported prawns, intended for human consumption, into the aquatic environment, through use as bait or berley presented a significant pathway for exposure of Australian crustaceans to imported prawns potentially infected with hazards. Surveys conducted in 2002 and 2007 investigating the use of prawns, intended for human consumption, as bait or berley provided significant data inputs for the Prawn IRA 2009. There had not been national surveys conducted since that time. Therefore, it was identified that the prawn review needed current data on the use of prawns as bait or berley to ensure the conclusions were based on current information. Questions to characterise the extent of the use of prawns purchased from seafood retailers as bait and berley by recreational fishers in Australia were nested within the 2019-20 National Recreational Social and Economic Survey of Recreational Fishers (Moore et al. 2023).

 

Results from this survey indicate that prawns were the most popular bait used by recreational fishers over the survey period, followed by various kinds of saltwater fish and cephalopods (octopus/squid/cuttlefish). While prawns were the most popular bait type nationally, there were differences at the jurisdictional level, with recreational fishers in Western Australian, Tasmania and the Northern Territory most commonly using cephalopods, while South Australian fishers most commonly used ‘other shellfish’.

 

Of the respondents who reported using prawns as bait and/or berley, 85% indicated that they had bought prawns from a bait supplier, while 20% indicated that they had bought prawns from a seafood retailer (some respondents reported purchasing prawns from both sources). Uncooked whole prawns were the most common prawn type purchased from a seafood retailer, with most respondents indicating that they had purchased a total of less than 1 kg over the previous 12 months. Most fishers reported using Australian origin prawns, but some reported using imported prawns or that they were unsure of the origin of the prawns they were using as bait.

 

To test whether recreational fishers are aware of the risks of using imported prawns intended for human consumption as bait, the survey also asked recreational fishers if they had seen advice regarding the use of imported seafood prawns as bait and berley. Almost half of all respondents said that they had seen advice regarding the use of imported seafood prawns as bait and berley, with the highest levels of awareness in Queensland and the lowest in Victoria.

Industry
PROJECT NUMBER • 2017-086
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Improved risk management of paralytic shellfish toxins in Southern Rock Lobster

To examine toxicokinetics of PST in Southern Rock Lobster, an experimental study was undertaken in a biosecure aquaculture facility in South Australia. Adult male lobsters were fed highly toxic mussels (6 mg STX.2HCl equiv. kg−1) sourced from the Tasmanian east coast for 4...
ORGANISATION:
University of Tasmania
Environment
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