Maintaining and enhancing market access for Australian seafood is critical for future industry growth.
SafeFish makes a significant contribution to this by:
• Researching and providing technical input to international multilateral and bilateral trade negotiations such as Codex
• Providing research and technical support to food safety incidents to minimise trade disruptions, including supporting appropriate risk communication
• Identifying emerging food safety issues and determining appropriate research and technical responses that will protect Australia’s continued access to markets
• Conducting research on seafood hazards to support risk management decisions e.g. sulphites in canned abalone, cadmium in prawns, parasites in finfish.
• Facilitating national and international expertise networks (including networks between researchers, industry and regulators)
• Developing and supporting food safety research and diagnostic capabilities e.g. marine biotoxin laboratory, norovirus and hepatitis A virus testing
• Supporting productive partnerships between industry and regulators such as Biosecurity Australia and FSANZ to enable utilisation of research findings and to facilitate “considered” responses to food safety issues.
Funding is required to undertake research on priority issues, supportcapacity, infrastructure and capability that has been developed through SafeFish since 2010. The ASCRC estimates the benefit/cost ratio for SafeFish is 11 to 1 with benefits accruing far wider than just to the industries involved. Ensuring the safety of seafood and sustaining access to markets provides significant public benefit.
This application is to bridge the gap to assist the transition between the ASCRC winding up and the FRDC implementing the recent changes to the PIRD Act that will enable ongoing industry investment. Several industry sectors (Abalone Council of Australia, Southern Rocklobster Limited, & Oysters Australia) have also committed funding for SafeFish using their respective FRDC IPA funds.

Oyster growing areas with reticulated sewage and/or waste water treatment plants (WWTP) in the catchment are all potentially affected by closures caused by sewage spills and overflows. Standard risk management practice following such events is to instigate a 21 day closure resulting in lost production, market share, reputational damage, and potential recall costs. The number of growing area closures related to sewage spills and overflows in Australia is significant. In NSW, harvest areas were closed on 100 occasions due to sewage spills between July 2009 and June 2014, resulting in 2688 days of lost sales. The use of FRNA phage as potential indicators of human enteric viruses could lead to a 50% reduction in the number of days closed.
In Tas, there have been 75 harvest area closures of greater than 21 days relating to sewage spills over the past 5 years, resulting in at least 1575 days of lost sales. One three week closure in the Pittwater growing area is estimated to cost approx. $250-$400k combined sales, depending on the season. The cumulative impact of these spills has been estimated to reduce the value of businesses by a combined value of $12 million. Not all sewage incidents result in human enteric viral contamination of shellfish. Factors such as the level of illness in the community, treatment level of waste, size of the spill, hydrodynamics of the growing area, and local growing area conditions all influence the whether a spill results in significant contamination of oysters. FRNA phages have not been used routinely as indicators in shellfish in Australia to date. If FRNA phage levels show contamination is negligible, regulators may allow re-opening of growing areas as early as 10 days after the spill following results from testing on day 7, significantly decreasing the cost of spills to growers. FRNA phages are also showing potential as general indicators of human pathogenic risk.

The giant cuttlefish Sepia apama, which annually migrate to northern Spencer Gulf, South Australia, has recently undergone substantial declines in abundance and attracted significant media and public attention. Whilst it is accepted that the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC)-accredited SGPF, which has been operating and reducing its effort for almost 50 years, has not been the cause of the decline, several consecutive years of diminishing numbers and a particularly low population estimate in 2013 requires all efforts to be made to minimise the incidental catch of this species. The SGPF has been pro-active in taking steps to minimise interactions during this species’ annual migration. One such measure is the commitment to investigate the development of a bycatch reduction device (BRD). During its development, it would be prudent to also ensure that the BRD also reduces the bycatch of blue swimmer crabs Portunus armatus, because these require additional handling and, owing to their exoskeletons, physically damage the soft-bodied prawns and cuttlefish.

A recent pilot study (2013/052) identified the parameters within which a successful BRD should exist. This work involved testing two Nordmøre-grids over a few deployments, yet yielded promising results (i.e. both designs reduced the numbers and weights of cuttlefish, crabs and total bycatch, and one of the designs maintained prawn catches). Through rigorous testing of refined versions of these Nordmøre-grids across larger spatial and temporal scales, the proposed study aims to produce an optimal design for potential implementation in the fishery.

Increasing fishing efficiency is one of the main ways fisheries can improve their profitability. This can be achieved in two ways for species that exhibit seasonal variation in weight – harvesting fewer individuals for the same catch (raise CPUE by increasing stock abundance), or catching the same number of fish but obtaining a larger catch (increase catch per day and overall). Recent research has demonstrated there are benefits to changing the fishing season in greenlip abalone, using information on their seasonally variable biology, to increase revenue, reduce exploitation rates, or achieve a combination of these two management objectives. This research has resulted in changes to seasonal greenlip fishing patterns made by Industry in the Western Zone of South Australia.
Blacklip abalone constitute 82% of the Australian abalone catch, so considerable benefits could be obtained from changes to the fishing season if they exhibit similar seasonal biological traits to greenlip. However, there are currently insufficient data to evaluate this. This project will address the need for additional information on the seasonal biology of blacklip and, following the success with greenlip, has been developed in direct response to the Western Zone of the South Australian abalone fishery seeking similar information on blacklip abalone. The proposal was discussed and supported by members of the Abalone Council of Australia in Adelaide on the 2nd May 2014 and is also a high priority for PIRSA Fisheries and Aquaculture.
The project will enable an analysis of newly obtained and existing data using the model already developed for greenlip. The outputs will be a cost-benefit analysis across a range of temporal fishing pattern scenarios. The key outcome will be adjustment of seasonal blacklip harvests, by industry, to maximise profitability.