National Recreational Fishing Forum Series (2025-2029)
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
Fishing and Aquaculture Workforce Capability Framework
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.
Final report
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.
Developing FRDC’s 2020-2025 RD&E Plan
Seafood employment and training platform – pathways content creation
Through the online platform, potential and existing employees will understand and have access to employment opportunities, resources to help build their knowledge, skills, competencies and experience (capabilities), identify career progression, training and development opportunities.
The platform content will focus on creating a positive/realistic narrative by providing a balanced portrayal, telling the story of seafood as a sustainable, future focused industry with growth opportunities and varied career options for all skill levels. Enabling an eye-opening experience, users will respond positively to being exposed to the breadth and depth of the seafood industry. Showcasing the variety of roles, sustainable solutions, low barriers to entry as well as transferability of skills will help paint the picture of a varied and inclusive industry where all are welcome.
This project aims to utilise existing and generate new content, as identified in project research to enable a successful platform launch.
Bursaries for emerging leaders in the Southern Rock Lobster industry to attend the 2023 Trans-Tasman Lobster Congress and International Conference & Workshop on Lobster Biology and Management 2023
Capability and Capacity: Understanding diverse learning approaches and knowledge transfer opportunities to inform and enable change
FRDC recently co-funded a cross-commodity project on Designing the integration of extension into research project (James, 2022), which sought to improve adoption of outcomes from RD&E project. At the conclusion of this report, recommendations for Phase 2 were made, and these included several focused on developing and trailing different learning approaches for knowledge transfer. Understanding learning approaches required for different topics and cohorts is an essential next step to improve practical outcomes associated with development, change, and adoption processes. This project represents an opportunity for FRDC to build on this initial investment and generate new knowledge on the connection between learning approaches and knowledge transfer to enhance the fisheries and aquaculture sector’s capability and capacity for adaptability and change.
A systematic review of the literature on the topics of adult learning, knowledge transfer, and transformational change will identify and evaluate relevant findings for the fisheries and aquaculture sector. These will be further ground-truthed through extensive stakeholder consultation within (a) wild catch organisations, (b) aquaculture organisations, and (c) through the wider industry knowledge network (e.g. extension officers and research teams). A compilation of informal and formal learning and development opportunities in fishing and aquaculture within organisations and in the wider industry will be analysed, and case studies of best practice identified, analysed and showcased as examples of successful change, adoption, skill development and shift in mindset.
These evidence-based context-specific insights will be translated into a guide, tool or micro-credential for best practice in designing and delivering knowledge transfer and practice change activities. The usefulness and ease of use of this resource will be tested in a workshop with FRDC extension professionals and other interested stakeholders, refined and then introduced to the fisheries and aquaculture community for application to learning and training in organisations and throughout the wider industry. It is expected that the findings of this project will have implications for the project Capability and capacity: Navigating leadership pathways in fishing in aquaculture, in particular insights on how learning approaches for the topic area of non-technical skills development (e.g. communication, team effectiveness, career self-management, problem-solving, strategic thinking and foresight) occur within organisations that may prove to be the start of the leadership pathway for people within fisheries and aquaculture, and if done effectively may widen and diversity the talent pipeline into mid to high leadership level development opportunities.
This project has been designed with a 12-month timeline, with options to scale down if required by FRDC.