This proposal represents an attempt to develop alternative technologies that would allow the prawn trawl industry to meet present and future strict environmental standards at a reduced operating cost. The proposal is not without risk, but reflects a genuine need to consider alternative fishing approaches outside the current thought envelope. If successful it would allow the industry to claim high environmental standards, meeting or exceeding the community expectations.

Alternatives to established fishery harvest methods are essential to meet ecologically sustainable development (ESD) requirements as dictated by international (UN) and national legislation (both federal and state) covering the marine environment. In recent years drift nets have been banned in many areas due to their detrimental impacts on non-targeted species and ecosystem structure. Similarly, ground trawling has been identified as a harvest technology that requires either restriction or banning due to its putative detrimental impacts on benthic ecosystems and disruption to food webs. Whereas drift net has been largely replaced by the sustainable and targeted method of hook and line harvesting, there are few alternatives to ground trawling.

Traps are used extensively for the harvesting of crustacea. Suitably designed pot traps can result in a minimum of by-catch and target individuals of specific size classes. However, pot trap fisheries utilise food as bait by which to attract the targeted species into the trap. Baited traps and pots are used for the commercial harvesting of pandalid prawns in the east Pacific and North Atlantic, where average catch/vessel/day of fishing effort is 80-110 kg. A smaller pot fishery exists for penaeid prawns in various parts of the Pacific basin and the Caribbean. However, attempts to date to develop a large pot trap fishery based on food bait for penaeid prawns have been largely unsuccessful.

It is proposed that chemical attractants, and not food bait, be examined as a means to harvest penaeid prawns in pots. The development of alternative harvest methods could form a non-trawl fishery with minimum by-catch, open up new areas to harvesting which are unsuitable for trawling, and produce a less stressful method to collect broodstock P. monodon prawns for the aquaculture sector as well as have spin-off potential for the development of pot trap fisheries for other species of crustacea.

Because Australia's rock lobster fisheries are at their maximum sustainable capacity, the value of the industry can be increased only through the development of aquaculture. In the immediate term, this could be achieved by on-growing of juveniles taken from the wild and the holding of adults for weight gain or niche marketing opportunities. In the longer term, domestication of the specie/s and hatchery propagation of the juveniles will enable a sustainable rock lobster aquaculture industry to develop. In Australia, these opportunities are seriously constrained by the lack of a cost-effective and efficacious rock lobster feed. This contrasts with the developing industry in New Zealand where waste from the large mussel industry is an available and inexpensive source of feed. If feed comprises from 40 to 50% of rock lobster production costs as is the case for prawn and finfish grow-out operations, the availability of a suitable formulated pelleted feed is seen as a necessity for commercial production.

Preliminary feed’s development work (FRDC 98/303) for juvenile and adult lobsters has been initiated in an 18-month project that terminated in December 1999. Although all lobster species consumed the developed dry feed pellets, the productivity of juvenile animals was inferior to the feeding of fresh mussels. However, with adult J. edwardsii held in sea cages, the pelleted diets were equal to fresh mussel in maintaining the condition (moult frequency, weight increase and survival) and colour of the lobsters The sub-optimal performance of the pelleted diets for the juveniles is thought to have been due to the reduced attractiveness and /or sub-optimal nutrient specifications of the diet for the lobsters. This project will seek to develop improved and more cost-effective pelleted dry lobster feeds for P. ornatus and J. edwardsii juveniles and to improve the feeds management of adult J. edwardsii. Dietary improvements made with the juvenile work will be applied to adult lobsters being held under commercial sea cage conditions in Professor Geddes’ ‘On-growing Project’ (98/305). A collaborative research approach involving CSIRO, TAFI and UA and other agencies in the RLEAS will give the best prospects for achieving our aims. The likelihood of the project being successful is high because:

1. The initial Feed’s Development Project has shown dry pelleted diets to be well accepted by the lobsters and further improvements are likely upon implementation of the proposed targeted research.
2. The project will build on the already established strong collaborative linkages between related rock lobster research being carried out at CSIRO, QDPI, TAFI, UA and by industry.
3. The assembled project team has considerable expertise and an established track record in delivery of successful feed development for other crustaceans (prawns) and finfish, and have established strong collaborative linkages with the aquafeed industry to aid the rapid commercialisation of the research.