2 results

Improving survival and quality of crabs and lobsters in transportation from first point of sale to market.

Project number: 2017-018
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $158,459.00
Principal Investigator: Sue Poole
Organisation: Department of Primary Industries (QLD)
Project start/end date: 10 Sep 2017 - 25 Sep 2019
Contact:
FRDC
TAGS
Rac Nsw
Mortality
Audit
SPECIES
Spanner Crab
Eastern Rock Lobster
Mud Crabs

Need

Industry producers and processors have identified that crabs and lobsters suffer quality deterioration
during transportation, which then results in downgrading and consequent price reduction. As lobsters and crabs are highly sought products, losses incurred through current handling chains cause significant waste of this valuable resource. In NSW eastern rock lobster, mud crab and spanner crab resources are fully fished and hence, full revenue return can only be gained by mitigating the wastage occurring.

It is known that quality loss in crustaceans is often caused by stress imposed along the supply chain. To reduce the likelihood of downgrading of product, there is a need to undertake an examination of the handling and transport issues pertinent to various landing ports, distribution chains and market sales points. Identification of specific stress factors and where they occur most severely will enable development of specific mitigation measures for Industry implementation.

The need for the research was noted in the NSW FRAC research priorities, 2016.

Objectives

1. Document current handling practices and transport pathways within the three crustacean industries and identify the factors contributing most to animal stress
2. Develop adapted handling and transport protocols that minimise the critical stress factors
3. Trial amended protocols within commercial operations
4. Evaluate success by change in number of downgrades and market price achieved for live product
5. Extend knowledge to industry sectors and encourage adoption by demonstration of protocols at local port meetings.

Final report

ISBN: 978-0-7345-0466-1
Author: Sue Poole and Paul Exley
Final Report • 2020-05-01 • 1.66 MB
2017-018-DLD.pdf

Summary

Eastern rock lobsters, spanner crabs and mud crabs command a high price when supplied to the market as live product. Being aquatic animals, the demands to retain maximum quality and liveliness through the supply chain are challenging. Once taken from water, these crustaceans are subject to multiple hurdles resulting in cumulative stress and diminishing probability of survival. For the past two years, scientists from Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries have been working with the New South Wales (NSW) crab and lobster Industries to determine ways to reduce stress imposed on the animals from capture to market. Through temperature monitoring along the supply chain, two key areas were identified as having high impact on the crustaceans. Handling by individual fishers from point of capture was critical to keep animals cool, damp, out of light and with minimal disturbance. Temperature during transport of crabs and lobsters often imposed severe stress, arising from truck refrigeration temperatures being set below the tolerance of live animals and the influence of cold truck floor-beds reducing live animal temperatures. The importance of careful handling after capture was emphasised with fishers and co-operative management staff regularly at every landing location visit. Simple modifications for protecting live animals from cold temperatures during transport were developed to reduce stress on the live animals. The benefit gained from adapted practices was successfully demonstrated within commercial operations.

Reducing uncertainty in the assessment of the Australian spanner crab fishery

Project number: 2003-046
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $378,224.93
Principal Investigator: Ian Brown
Organisation: Department of Primary Industries (QLD)
Project start/end date: 29 Jun 2003 - 22 Feb 2008
Contact:
FRDC
TAGS
Survey
Physiology
Biotechnology
Aquaculture
Analytics
SPECIES
Spanner Crab

Need

In his assessment of the Queensland spanner crab fishery for exemption from the export controls of the EPBC Act, the Federal Environment and Heritage Minister recommended that arrangements for joint monitoring and assessment of the shared stock of spanner crabs be made, with a view to eventual co-management. This process needs to be addressed before the next Commonwealth review of the fishery in five years’ time. While the development of complementary management arrangements is ultimately a core-business function of the two State governments, the evaluation of existing monitoring and assessment paradigms and the synthesis of a common reference point-setting process clearly requires significant collaboration between scientists, modellers and statisticians.

A workshop involving scientists and fishery managers from Queensland and NSW was held recently (27 September ’02) to examine collaborative options with regard to research and management in the spanner crab fisheries. The meeting agreed that there is a need to conduct simultaneous field trials of the two States’ monitoring surveys, to determine their relative cost-effectiveness as fishery-independent measures of stock abundance. The broad principles of such an exercise were agreed to, and details of the experimental design were fleshed-out at another meeting of research collaborators in NSW in late November.

Previous work aimed at estimating growth rates in spanner crabs has yielded highly divergent results, and none has provided a reliable estimate of age at recruitment. It is essential that this knowledge-gap is bridged because an estimate of age at recruitment is crucial to the successful development of age-based assessment models. Ideally such a model, tuned with the LTMP fishery-independent survey data, would replace the simplistic CPUE regression-based model.

While the fishery-independent spanner crab monitoring programme will overcome hyperstability problems inherent in the commercial statistics, it still requires the use of commercial gear, and is therefore subject to the same problems of variable catchability. These are presumably related to behavioural cycles of the crabs, habitat patchiness, and the effects of environmental factors such as water temperature. The impact of these factors on catchability needs to be investigated if survey and commercial CPUE data are to be interpreted correctly and the assessment process significantly improved.

Objectives

1. Determine the age at which spanner crabs recruit to the fishery.
2. Develop a common methodology for monitoring and assessing the Australian spanner crab stock.
3. Exploratory investigation of sources of variability in apparent population density.

Final report

ISBN: 978-0-7345-0394-7
Author: Ian Brown
Final Report • 2009-03-12
2003-046-DLD.pdf

Summary

Spanner crabs (Ranina ranina) represent a valuable single-species fishery in Queensland. Although a transparent and effective assessment process was developed some years ago for setting the commercial total allowable catch (TAC), additional information was needed to reduce some of the uncertainty in assessments, and to incorporate fishery-independent information from the DPI&F Long-Term Monitoring surveys into the process. The exploited stock crosses State boundaries and extends into northern NSW waters, but historically quite different approaches to monitoring and assessment have been developed by the two States. 
This project set out to clarify conflicting estimates of growth rates, develop an integrated (stock-wide) system for monitoring and assessing the status of the resource, and to examine some environmental variables believed to be responsible for influencing catch rates.
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