The papers published in this book were all presented at the Symposium "Making the Most of the Catch..." held in Brisbane, Australia, 25-27 July 1996.

The contributors came from many countries and from many different institutions. They were selected in an endeavour to present a broad spectrum of information at a range of levels such that there would be topics of vital interest to each of the participants, whether they were involved in research, industry or regulation. The topics also represent many of the issues which are of current and future concern to the Australian industry, whose export markets are mostly in Asia, particularly Japan. Domestic issues were not neglected and presentations concerned aquaculture as well as the capture fisheries.

This Symposium was organised deliberately to immediately precede the Second World Fisheries Congress which was being held in Brisbane to cover regulation, biology, stock assessment and political issues in fisheries. In view of the fact that the world's fishery resources are fully exploited, the theme of "Making the Most of the Catch..." was considered to be highly appropriate to the current situation.

The funding investment in, and conduct of, research and how best to ensure transfer of results and information, and to effect improvements in communication and training added to the theme. The influence that different practices in feeding, harvesting and transportation may have on live and aquacultured species and how these practices can be controlled to result in a better product broadened the theme. The latest in safety issues, the challenges of inspection, HACCP, better techniques for the development of new products and the influence of process variables extended matters. A notable inclusion was in the example of the integration of catch data with complex process information thus creating a nexus of pre- and post-catch information to optimise yields and to plan fishing operations, a concept not yet employed, and probably unheard of, in fisheries management.

The Symposium was solely organised through the Centre for Food Technology, a unit of the Queensland Department of Primary Industries which also organised an international seafood conference in 1991. However, apart from a conference organised by FAQ and held in Melbourne in 1984, "Making the Most of the Catch..." is the first international symposium of Australian origin in the field of seafood technology from which written papers have been submitted and published as a proceedings. The Symposium attracted many of the workers from the major institutions around Australia who have involvement in some aspect of seafood research. Probably more important was the fact that it was attended by many scientists from overseas. That result and these proceedings amount to an injection of intellectual capital into the Australian scene facilitating the forging of personal links between scientists working on a similar problem in different situations. It is not just the exchange of knowledge and the continuing value of the material in the written proceedings, but, it is these ongoing personal links from which new and important contacts are made which provide overwhelming justification for meetings such as this.

This report covers the activities projects 1996/341 and 1999/333 for the period 1996 to 2000.  In October 1999 AUSEAS along with the National Seafood Centre (NSC) and SeaQual were brought together under the umbrella name of Seafood Services Australia (SSA).

To avoid confusion, for the remainder of this report, the previous name of the service AUSEAS (Australian Seafood Extension and Advisory Service) has been replaced with the new title SSA.

The report begins with a review of current activities including: 

• industry inquiries and the SSA responses;
• consultancies;
• the preparation of the Australian Seafood Industry Directory;
• the sales of technical literature packages.

A discussion of the available information resources is then followed by promotional activities.  This is followed by a consideration of staffing issues including staff skills development to better service clients’ needs.

Finally, there is a discussion of planned new initiatives including development of a “one-stop shop” Internet site for the post-harvest fisheries sector.  This will allow clients to access a wide range of information held in the SSA databases including:  the bibliography of the technical information available through this service;  sources of assistance for industry development;  and a topical issues discussion line.  A special feature of this will be a series of technical advisory notes.

Keywords: Literature searches; Publications; Information; Advice; Research.