An acoustic assessment of habitat and abundance in the Northern Demersal Scalefish Fishery
SCRC: SCRC Honours Scholarship - Novel products from Blue Swimmer Crabs
SCRC: PhD: Habitat enhancement to increase productivity in abalone fisheries
This proposal meets the broad objectives and targets outlined within the Future Harvest Theme Business Plan (e.g. novel management strategies in place which increase economic yield from our fisheries; fisheries management strategies targeting maximum benefit from the resource while maintaining stocks above sustainability indicators). The project specifically targets objective 1.2 of the Future Harvest Theme (Program 3), namely enhanced yields from wild-harvest innovations, and adds value to a current project (2009/710 – Bioeconomic evaluation of commercial scale stock enhancement in abalone) and the new investment proposal (2010/784 -Commercialisation of abalone stock enhancement).
The research question focuses on a well-known bottleneck to abalone fishery productivity, namely habitat limitation for different life-history stages. Any increase of habitat should increase abalone fishery productivity as well as enhance the general ecological community and there is a need to experimentall examine the effect of "habitat intervention" to assess its potential as management tool.
Seafood CRC: new opportunities for seafood processing waste
Seafood CRC: new opportunities for underutilised species
Approximately 25,000 tonnes of finfish is not harvested in Australia each year, even though operators are licensed to do so. This is because the fish have a low market value (leatherjacket), are difficult to process (Boarfish), are very fragile and require an exacting supply chain to reach the market in satisfactory condition (sardines, Australian Salmon) or are harvested from remote areas with inadequate support infrastructure. Additional tonnage is harvested but directed to low value products such as pet food, bait and aquaculture feed (sardines, mackerel, silver warehou, bonito tuna). There are also areas (e.g. Western Deep Trawl) where little is know about the fishery resource and potential
for commercialization. And there are also fish discarded after being caught due to low market value or insufficient space for storage. Each of these under-utilised species can be used to produce high quality, fresh and processed products that could help meet the increasing demand for seafood.