With the exception for one farm, the Australian prawn farming industry remains reliant on the use of wild broodstock in hatcheries to generate seed to stock farm ponds,. Due partly to problems with GAV often occurring at high prevalence in North Queensland (NQ) (eg. Etty Bay, Bingil Bay, Bramston Beach, Yorkeys Knob), GAV-free broodstock have increasingly been sought from more remote locations in the Northern Territory (NT) (eg. Joseph Bonaparte Gulf and Melville/Tiwi Island) (Cowley et al. 2016).

Broodstock pairs (male + female) typically cost ~$160 when sourced locally from NQ and ~$600 when sourced from NT. Hatcheries use in the order of 3,000 wild-caught broodstock pairs annually. Thus due to (i) the substantially higher costs of broodstock sourced from remote regions in NT, (ii) the detection of a GAV variant designated Yellow head virus genotype 7 (YHV7) amongst NT stock (Cowley et al. 2016) with commercially relevant pathogenic potential (CSIRO Unpublished data) and (iii) difficulties in supply continuity and transport stress, the use of a hatchery-based RNAi strategy to reduce or clear GAV infection from local NQ broodstock with potential to abrogate or curtail the vertical transmission of GAV to progeny would significantly benefit industry.

Proof-of-concept obtained in this project that RNAi can be up-scaled from experimental to hatchery-scale systems, and that progeny with markedly reduced GAV infection loads can be generated from carrier broodstock injected with dsRNA, will provide industry with the confidence needed to apply the technology commercially once an APVMA permit has been issued for its use.

Producing peer-reviewed publication on these topics is part of the suite of approaches aimed at increasing uptake of FH projects. Scientific papers enable exchange of ideas internationally. They are part of the process of changing fishery management which needs these types of outputs to defend decisions.

East Coast Trawl Fishery (ECTF) involves fishers, agent and/or wholesaler, processors, various industry and government organisations and retailers. The lack of collaboration and production activities due to the lengthy coast and long distance between trawl areas along with a multi species fishery has resulted in the fishery becoming (i) a production focused industry and (ii) location oriented rather than whole of state or whole of fishery oriented industry. Consequently, intense competition exists within East Coast Trawl throughout the whole supply and value chain. This has been exacerbated by the decline in the value of Queensland prawn production over the past five years caused by record high fuel costs; labour shortages; competition from imported product and the strong Australian dollar. Furthermore, ACPF have identified a whole of industry approach as a research priority with an objective to identify a specific opportunity/strategy to pursue, not as individual fishers, but as a collective fishery. This project aims to develop a framework and benchmark case study to identify the leadership qualities and commitment within the ECTF. The implementation of a market opportunity/strategy will assess the identified ECTF leadership group and the network’s ability to increase long term profitability for the fishery.
The industry has identified and agreed to the need to develop collaboration within the fishery to leverage existing and future market opportunities. The understanding and building of industry social capital to support internal leadership through a network analysis is seen as fundamental to the development, coordination and implementation of a market approach for the industry.