As with the Great Barrier Reef Marine Protected Area and the South-east Marine Bio-regional plan, future social and economic impact assessments of Commonwealth and State declared MPAs/marine reserves are likely to contribute to the estimated quantum and distribution of adjustment assistance for displaced fishing effort.

However, previous experiences of adjustment assistance for displaced effort have never been evaluated as to whether these schemes alleviated the impacts on communities and fishers most affected or whether the assistance provided was used by recipients for what it was intended.

Evaluating these impacts will better inform and shape the intensive marine bioregional planning process over the next two years.

An optimised displaced effort adjustment program should result in:

1. potentially reduced expenditure due to better-targetted assistance
2. faster planning processes for future MPAs.
3. reduced administrative burdens due to lower levels of complaints and challenge.

With the decline in several other sea urchin fisheries around the world, there now exists a good opportunity to develop a large and valuable fishery for purple and red sea urchins in NSW. In addition, there is also interest in the further development of the purple urchin fishery near Mallacoota in eastern Victoria, and the white urchin fishery in Port Phillip Bay. This interest is evidenced in both NSW and Victoria by substantial capital investment in factories to process sea urchins and their roe. If these urchin fisheries could be further developed within an appropriate management framework, it could also lead to significant benefits for the abalone fishery, particularly in NSW, because of the interaction between the two species.

Because of the limited development of this fishery to date, it provides an ideal opportunity to assess stocks of sea urchins prior to any major depletion by fishing. Sampling techniques have already been developed for sea urchins in barren habitats, and could easily be transferred to habitats where commercial fishing will be concentrated. Such assessments may be particularly important considering the evidence from other urchin fisheries, where large virgin stocks have been rapidly depleted with only low rates of recovery from the recruitment of juveniles.

Preliminary information from NSW suggests a large proportion of the sea urchin population does not contain high quality roe. Unless high quality roe can be reliably collected, the costs of processing sea urchins may restrict development of the fishery. Two main techniques have been used in other fisheries to improve the supply of food to sea urchins on reefs, and hence the quality of roe that can be harvested. If these techniques could be adapted for sea urchins in NSW, significant improvements in yield and value would be possible. Further, as the simple, large scale removals are already being used in the industry, there is also a need to detect their impacts on other species.

Farming Atlantic salmon is Australia's most internationally competitive and sophisticated sustainable finfish aquaculture. The product has an international reputation for quality and this, in part, reflects the feeds used on salmon farms. Thus, major importance is attached to the availability of economic high quality salmon feeds. In other countries producing salmonids considerable public and commercial financial resources are directed into salmonid nutrition research. This means that advances are continually being made in our understanding of salmonid nutrition and feed design. However, this information is not directly applicable to salmon farmed in Australia nor is it always available in the public domain and it is therefore extremely important that Australia maintains its own capability for research on Atlantic salmon. The psalmon and trout. The research is needed because:-
1. Environmental conditions are very different in Australia compared with other areas in the world where salmon are farmed and research is conducted and therefore nutritional requirements and feed utilisation will also differ;
2. Ingredients that are available to European feed manufacturers are not readily or cheaply available in Australia and therefore a considerable amount of research is not relevant to the design of salmon feeds for Australian conditions;
3. Ingredients that are available in Australia and have great potential to be used in salmon feeds are not (yet) of interest to feed manufacturers outside Australia and therefore research needs to be conducted on these;
4. The availability and cost of fish meal will increasingly be a major restriction to producing economic high quality salmon feeds.