Management decisions should be based on good quality data. Any steps taken to improve an inadequate baseline will eventually improve data quality and the subsequent cost effectiveness of obtaining these data. Any part of the baseline where confusion can arise should be identified and improved as soon as possible. The fisheries coding system knees to be enhanced to improve its functionality to clarify names and assist users when obtaining or vetting fish data. It will also prove an important baseline for a variety of other industry uses. The resources are presently available to improve this baseline and these may not be available in the future. It also coincides with a period of activity whereby the names our seafood will be standardised and legislated. The project is timely and should be completed now.

In addition to the commercial fishing industry, fish names are frequently referred to by an extremely broad variety of groups including administrators, aquarists, editors, educators, lawyers, legislators, recreational fishermen, scientists, seafood consumers and writers. The need for a standard list of common names of Australian fishes was eloquently flagged by eminent Australian scientist, Gilbert Whitley, some thirty years ago (see attached excerpt from his paper, appendix 4). A national nomenclatural standard covering all Australian fishes is long overdue - no such standard presently exists for secondary commercial any bycatch species. CAAB has now been adopted as the industry wide coding system but would be considerably more useful if it contained standardised common name information and an image of each species.

The unavailability or inconsistency use of common names of fish has created a problem for all sectors of the seafood industry. It has also led to serious confusion when interpreting catch return sheets and fisheries data based on common names. Even the guidelines of this application form (ie Project title and identification) request the use of the approved marketing mane of each species. However, most secondary commercial and almost all bycatch species have not been allocated a single approved common name.

Whereas the process of establishing single names for the main commercial species has been contentious, it is likely to be much simpler for the remaining fishes. If approached properly, the task only needs to be done once. The final product should be definitive work on the common names of Australian fishes requiring minimal alteration in the future.

The recently published Australian Seafood Handbook has created many enquiries from governmental and commercial groups wanting to gain access to images held in the CSIRO fish image library. However, in it s present form, this image collection cannot be accessed cost effectively.. The bulk of the collection is in celluloid format and the digital component has bot been assigned to a search and retrieval oriented database. Hence, it is presently grossly under utilised. A logical step is to digitise the collection and make the images freely available on the CAAB website, simultaneously improving accessibility and making CAAB more user friendly.

(The needs addressed in the original Handbook application remain current [Appendix 1]).

Despite the exceptional diversity of Australian seafood, there is no relevant, comprehensive identification guide to assist Industry personnel or consumers. This fact was highlighted recently in a FRDC-funded market survey of the excellent 1994 Australian Seafood Catering Manual (Kane et al, 1994, hereafter referred to as ‘The Catering Manual’). This report assessed the success and usefulness of The Catering Manual, which included the names of over 175 domestic seafood species and photographs of 54 but virtually no information on how to distinguish them. Remarkably, 63% of Catering Manual users surveyed use it to identify species (QDPI, 1997). This book has pictures of less than 12% of domestic seafood species and only very infrequent notes on how to identify them but is used by a majority of Industry personnel as an identification guide. There is an obvious need for a thorough and comprehensive identification guide.

FRDC recognised the need for such a guide and in 1994 funded the “Handbook of Australian Seafood”. However, during the Handbook’s production, the following issues have been raised:

• The original Handbook grant application allowed for the inclusion of 60 imported and 240 domestic species. However, we have now identified 466 domestic species, an increase of over 90%. (Imported species are addressed below). The inclusion of these additional species is critical to the Handbook’s success; a comprehensive guide would instil greater confidence in, and awareness of, the range of products available and would help promote less fashionable seafoods.

• A repeatable, objective method of identifying the flesh of species by protein fingerprinting has been used in the production of the Handbook to date. Such a technique is required when fish substitution is suspected and the inclusion of protein fingerprints in the recently published South East Fishery Quota Species—an Identification Guide (CSIRO, 1997, hereafter referred to as ‘The SEF Guide’) has been welcomed by, among others, the Australian Government Solicitor’s office (Appendix 2). It is important that this technique be applied to all species included in the Handbook, including the additional ones discussed above.

• Marketing Names for Fish and Seafood in Australia, an authoritative guide to correct marketing names for Australian seafood, was published in 1995. However, Handbook-related research has identified problems with domestic species included in the book (imported species are addressed below). A number of common commercial species are not included and some, worthy of unique marketing names, are currently placed in ‘catch-all’ groups (e.g., Lutjanus russelli, marketed widely as Moses Perch, is currently included under Sea Perch, Lutjanus species).

• While examining fillets to collect data on distinguishing features, we discovered numerous useful characters that, to our knowledge, have not been documented for identification purposes anywhere else. The comprehensive inclusion of this data in the fillet identification section of the Handbook would provide a unique and valuable resource for the post-harvest sector of the Industry and to consumers, and would set the standard for such work worldwide.

• Preliminary research into frozen seafood species imported into Australia has shown the need for a thorough investigation of its composition. The Marketing Names Guide included about 50 imported species. We recently surveyed eight importers who, between them, import only 14 (28%) of those but who also import 30 or so additional species. We propose to review the composition of Australia's seafood imports and summarise our findings in a second Handbook dedicated to imported species.