131 results
Environment
PROJECT NUMBER • 2013-004
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Aquatic Animal Health Subprogram: the Neptune Project- a comprehensive database of Australian aquatic animal pathogens and diseases

Aquatic animal health experts from the Queensland Museum (QM) have been completing work on a parasite and disease database called Neptune. Work on Neptune has taken place at QM in Brisbane since May 2013, resulting in the completion of major improvements to the database. These will allow Neptune to...
ORGANISATION:
Queensland Museum

A study of seafood consumption in Perth and the development of a guide to targeted promotion

Project number: 1999-342
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $44,940.00
Principal Investigator: Graeme Peacock
Organisation: Ruello and Associates Pty Ltd
Project start/end date: 5 Jan 1999 - 17 May 2000
Contact:
FRDC

Need

Given the many changes to the business environment and eating habits in Perth since the National Fish Consumption Study, particularly over the past year, there is a great need for up to date reliable information on the consumption of seafood in Perth to comprehend and overcome this reported downturn in seafood retail sales and for long term planning for the producers and marketers of seafood.

This information would also allow industry to make better use of the States underutilised finfish particularly the species coming to Perth from remote areas such as the North West Shelf which are currently not fetching high prices. With the growing number of Asian fish shops in Perth and the growing interest in ethnic foods, import replacement with local underutilised species is of great importance.

Australia as a whole can benefit from the results of this research because this study can be directly compared with a similar study being conducted in Sydney by Ruello & associates (FRDC 98/345). The results of the two studies in the west and east can then be used by other states in between the two seaboards.

This Western Australian project is best regarded as an extension to the Sydney FRDC 98/345 project. It is intended that the Perth study can start in January 1999 so that interviews are conducted at the same time in Perth and Sydney so that we have uniform seasonal data on both sides of the continent.

The development of a simple guide on where and how to target advertising will be a first for the Australian seafood industry. It will prove to be a valuable tool for industry sectors all around Australia and will encourage and assist the retail sector to advertise their business and their products

Objectives

1. To measure and in-home and out of home consumption of seafood in Perth:* examine the species and volumes purchased by consumers* examine the factors influencing consumer decisions to buy/not buy* propose actions which can be taken to increase the sale and consumption of Australian seafoods, particularly underutilised species, in a profitable manner for both the producers and retailers.* produce a simple guide on how to target advertising to enhance seafood sales

Final report

ISBN: 0-9577695-55
Author: Graham Peacock
Final Report • 2000-03-30 • 6.97 MB
1999-342-DLD.pdf

Summary

This study was initiated in response to industry requests for information on the consumption of fish and seafood in Perth, because of widespread concerns about static or declining sales levels, to provide recommendations on how to increase retail sales profitably. It was designed to repeat much of the 1991 National Seafood Consumption Study (NSCS) so as to examine changes in fish/seafood consumption and retailers and consumers attitudes to fish and seafood since then. 

The study was undertaken in parallel with a research project on retail sales, seafood consumption and consumer attitudes in Sydney which started several months earlier. This report details the findings from three focus group discussions with Perth consumers in February 1999, a total of 430 interviews on out of home consumption and 461 interviews on in home consumption and consumers attitudes. It also records the results of a study of consumers’ awareness of seafood advertising and the reaction to selected promotional posters and statements and has a guide designed to assist retailers to plan and execute targeted advertising and other promotional exercises.

Keywords: seafood consumption, Perth, promotion guide.

Blank
PROJECT NUMBER • 2022-141
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

SIA early mover micro project - integrated wave energy microgrid design

Aquaculture operators are predominately reliant on diesel generation for their ocean-based operations, while shore-based facilities like hatchery production and processing use grid supply electricity, typically with diesel backup power. The growing pressures on the industry necessitates a transition...
ORGANISATION:
Climate KIC Australia (for Australian Ocean Energy Group)

Indigenous fishing subprogram: Building the Capacity and Performance of Indigenous Fisheries

Project number: 2013-218
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $230,000.00
Principal Investigator: Ewan A. Colquhoun
Organisation: Ridge Partners
Project start/end date: 30 Apr 2013 - 17 Jul 2016
Contact:
FRDC

Need

Wild capture fisheries are a national asset. They contribute in two ways: USE as a social, cultural or economic asset, AND value created through people and MANAGEMENT systems guiding that use. Aquaculture is an increasingly important seafood source offering potential across all sectors.

The IRG's RD&E Strategy contains 5 Aspirations, 11 Principles and related Outputs. Their comprehensive, integrated approach provides a single framework that offers a key role for all stakeholders, locally and nationally.

The IRG's Strategy will be successful only when it resolves key challenges, including:
- poor understanding and awareness of the needs of indigenous fishery users, and their monitoring of progress toward social/cultural/economic aspirations they aspire to,
- lack of capacity (human, management, structural) of fishers and communities to respond to and benefit from this Strategy,
- lack of alignment between customary sea management practices, enterprise profit motives, social/cultural/economic drivers for community viability, and government practices,
- the diversity of indigenous fisheries, across cultures, geography, aquatic environments, species and economic opportunities.

The Strategy must:
- create a viable pathway forward,
- increase fishery value in the hands of users, and
- better align government policy and process. This will require a policy and regulatory gap analysis and review options to better align these with traditional sea management approaches.

Change will take time - but outputs must demonstrate increasing value (social/cultural/economic) to fishers and communities.

The Project Team will partner with 4-5 indigenous fishery communities to consult and understand their fisheries, aspirations, needs, capacities and alignment with social/cultural/economic factors. The Team will respond with actions that aim to boost fishery value. Local case studies will inform national approaches and about what works, when and where.

The project will cost effectively create new tools, structures, alignments, data, and capacities, in the hands of the IRG, indigenous fishers and communities.

Objectives

1. Identify 4-5 Case Study fishing communities, and work with IRG and stakeholders to document aspirations and social/cultural/economic capacity, identify constraints to achieving desired community and national development outcomes, and test/trial micro development pathways.
2. Evaluate models (enterprise/management), conduct gap analyses (policy/regulatory), and synthesize and document preferred development pathways (national/regional) to enhance indigenous access to, participation in, and benefits (social/cultural/economic) from fishery development.
3. Establish and document output and extension strategies (3yr + 5yr) for the IRG (national) and each participating regional indigenous fishing community.
4. Document and report learnings (IRG + case studies), models, performance monitoring arrangements, and recommendations to the IRG that will enhance future indigenous fishery performance and community benefits

Final report

ISBN: 978-0-9871427-6-4
Author: Ewan Colquhoun
Final Report • 2018-09-21 • 6.22 MB
2013-218-DLD.pdf

Summary

This project was commissioned by the Indigenous Reference Group, an advisory committee to the FRDC for matters related to Indigenous fishery research, development and extension (R&D).
 
The project sought to build the capacity and performance of Australia’s Indigenous fisheries. It identified issues and drivers, and describes methods, means, outputs and outcomes to enhance fishery capacity and performance.
 
This report summary comprises four parts:
  1. Review of the economic framework that impacts Indigenous community and fishery development

    The starting point for the project was the IRG’s RD&E Framework for Indigenous fishery development. This framework of eleven key R&D Principles and five national and community aspirations, is grounded in a vision to enable continuous improvement, rising from Primacy to Capacity Building.

    This is the pathway to achieve sustainable increases in the capacity and performance of Indigenous fisheries, collectively and for individual communities. Indigenous communities will be the immediate and primary beneficiaries of this vision fulfilled.

  2. Issues and drivers for Indigenous fisheries
    The project has identified issues that impact the capacity and performance of Indigenous fisheries, and related drivers of uncertainty and change.
    UNLOCK THE INDIGENOUS ESTATE
    EMPLOYMENT, LEARNING AND MICROBUSINESSES
    SUSTAINABLE SEAFOOD AND TOURISM
    INDIGENOUS PARTICIPATION IN FISHERIES

  3. Conclusions regarding business models to support economic development
    Project design called for 4-5 case studies that would represent the national Indigenous community fishery cohort, meet project objectives, and inform the IRG and RD&E decision makers.
    Guided by the IRG, the project team has engaged seven case study fishery communities in face-to-face consultations regarding fishery status, capacity, performance, models, aspirations, economic development options, and analyses and reporting.

  4. Recommendations to the IRG/FRDC regarding measures and actions to build the capacity and performance of Indigenous fisheries.
The project team recommends the IRG consider the following actions:
  1. Implement a plan to identify Indigenous fishery communities across Australia that hold exclusive or non-exclusive rights to, and control of underutilised fishery resources.
  2. Encourage Indigenous fishery communities that seek to develop their fishery resources, to establish at least one community corporation registered with the Office of the Registrar of Indigenous Corporations
  3. Encourage each Indigenous fishery community (including local residents and remote TOs and members) to undertake a formal planning process
  4. Encourage community to identify commercial partners, networks and collaborations
  5. Empower Indigenous fishery community leaders to attend, contribute to and learn
Environment
PROJECT NUMBER • 2013-002
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Aquatic Animal Health Subprogram: Identifying the cause of Oyster Oedema Disease (OOD) in pearl oysters (Pinctada maxima), and developing diagnostic tests for OOD

The goal of this project was to investigate the cause of oyster oedema disease (OOD) in Australian pearl oysters so that diagnostic tests and management practices for the disease can be developed. OOD has been associated with mortalities in some pearl oyster farming areas. However, the cause of...
ORGANISATION:
Macquarie University

Trials of oceanographic data collection on commercial fishing vessels in SE Australia

Project number: 2022-007
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $347,802.00
Principal Investigator: Ian Knuckey
Organisation: Fishwell Consulting Pty Ltd
Project start/end date: 31 Jul 2022 - 30 May 2025
Contact:
FRDC

Need

Australia’s fisheries span a large area of ocean. Australia has the world’s third largest Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), with an area of over 8 million km2. This zone contains mainly Commonwealth managed fisheries, with State jurisdictions mainly in coastal waters up to the 3 nautical mile limit. Australia's total wild-catch fisheries gross value of production is $1.6 billion, of which 28% is from Commonwealth fisheries and 72% from the smaller coastal inshore fisheries managed by state jurisdictions. The wildcatch fisheries sector employs about 10,000 people across Australia (https://www.awe.gov.au/abares/research-topics/fisheries/fisheries-and-aquaculture-statistics/employment).

The commercial fishing industry has a network of thousands of vessels working mainly in inshore waters around Australia. They can supply a potential platform for extensive and fine scale spatial and temporal monitoring of the waters of the continental shelf (0-1200m), from the surface to the ocean floor. Given that their livelihoods depend on it, they have a keen understanding of oceanographic conditions with respect to fish behaviour, feeding and spawning and the various oceanographic factors that may influence this. In some fisheries (e.g. surface tuna longlining), fishers eagerly seek and use readily available fine-scale oceanographic data such as sea surface temperature and sea level, to improve their targeting and achieve higher resultant catch rates. For many other fisheries, however, it is the fine-scale sub-surface oceanographic conditions (feed layers, thermoclines, temperature at depth etc) that have a critical influence on their fishing dynamics. Unfortunately, this type of oceanographic data is far less readily available. Although fishers and scientists know these factors are important, the time series of fine scale spatial and temporal data relevant to fishery operations is not available to include in stock assessments. As a result, it is often assumed that variations in catch rates reflect changing stock abundance, when it may simply be a result of changing oceanographic conditions.

Marine scientists collect a vast range of oceanographic data using satellites, subsurface drones, and static and drifting buoys. Sea surface data, however, is much easier and more cost-effective to collect at high spatial and temporal resolutions than sub-surface data. Hence, understanding of sub-surface oceanographic conditions tends to be derived from modelling more than actual measurement. This may be sufficient at a wide-scale global or continental level, but it is not adequate at the fine-scale spatial and temporal resolution required for fisheries management.

The use of commercial fishing gear as a research data platform has been increasing in popularity internationally (https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fmars.2020.485512/full). A number of groups in Europe have been doing this for a decade (e.g Martinelli et al 2016), and New Zealand are also now involved (https://www.moanaproject.org/te-tiro-moana). However, this approach has yet to be implemented in Australia in a coordinated way. In particular, our approach dictates open access data served through the IMOS Australian Ocean Data Network (www.aodn.org.au) that can be collected once and used many times.

In this project we intend to instrument seafood sector assets (e.g Trawl Nets, longlines, pots) with fit-for- purpose quality-controlled (QC'd) temperature/pressure sensors to increase the sub-surface temperature data coverage around Australia’s shelf and upper slope regions (0-800m) at low cost. Not only will this assist in the collection of data at relevant spatial and temporal scales for use by fishers, but it will also provide a far more extensive level of QC’d data to oceanographers in near real time (NRT) for evaluation and ingestion into data-assimilating coastal models that will provide improved analysis and forecasts of oceanic conditions. In turn, this will also be of value to the fishing sector when used to standardise stock assessments.

Martinelli, M., Guicciardi, S., Penna, P., Belardinelli, A., Croci, C., Domenichetti, F., et al. (2016). Evaluation of the oceanographic measurement accuracy of different commercial sensors to be used on fishing gears. Ocean Eng. 111, 22–33. doi: 10.1016/J.OCEANENG.2015.10.037

Objectives

1. Effective installation and operation of oceanographic data collection equipment on network of commercial fishing vessels using a range of common fishing gear
2. To provide QC’d data direct to fishers in near real-time to assist in habitat characterisation and the targeting of effort
3. To cost-effectively increase the spatial resolution of sub-surface physical data collected in Australia’s inshore, shelf, upper-slope, and offshore waters by fitting commercial fishing equipment from a variety of gear types with low-cost temperature/pressure sensors
4. To make the QC’d temperature depth data publicly available through the IMOS-AODN portal for uptake and use in ways that support safe maritime operations the sustainable management of marine resources, and improves understanding of drivers of change.

Article

Final Report • 2024-11-07 • 7.45 MB
2022-007-DLD.pdf

Summary

Working with IMOS and oceanographers at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Fishwell Consulting engaged its established networks across the Australian commercial fishing community to harness the capacity of commercial fishing vessels in environmental data acquisition. Deployment of temperature/depth sensors on commercial fishing vessels was shown to augmentand complement more expensive data collection platforms (e.g. ocean gliders, remote operated vehicles, Argo floats, dedicated research vessels) to provide much needed sub-surface temperature data to improve ocean circulation models and forecasting capacity. In proof-of-concept trials conducted over twelve months (from May 2023), more than 30 fishing vessels and their fishing gear were equipped with temperature sensors and data transmission equipment. These trials yielded more than 2.8 million data points from the sea surface to 1,214m depth considerably expanding existing data records. In particular, waters previously poorly observed, including the Great Australian Bight, Joseph Bonaparte Gulf, and the Gulf of Carpentaria, yielded valuable sub-surface temperature data.
Industry
PROJECT NUMBER • 2014-242
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Commercialising the production of Cobia in Australia

This project is a collaboration between the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (DAF) and the Cobia aquaculture sector, predominantly Pacific Reef Fisheries (PRF). It was undertaken to consolidate the aquaculture in Australia of Cobia, a species offering considerable potential as a...
ORGANISATION:
Department of Primary Industries (QLD)
SPECIES
Communities
PROJECT NUMBER • 2014-005
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

RAC WA: The application, needs, costs and benefits of Habitat Enhancement Structures in Western Australia and cost effective monitoring methods

Habitat Enhancement Structures (HES) developments are increasing in Australia and worldwide providing many benefits to the environment and different user groups. With this rapid growth there are still large knowledge gaps evident in relation to HES. This project investigated the application, needs,...
ORGANISATION:
Recfishwest
Environment
PROJECT NUMBER • 2013-201
PROJECT STATUS:
COMPLETED

Development of a harvest management, governance and resource sharing framework for a complex multi-sector, multi-jurisdiction fishery: the south-east Australian ‘western’ snapper stock

This report involves the ‘Western Victorian Snapper (Chrysophrys auratus) Stock’ (WVSS) which supports arguably the most important marine fin-fish fishery for Victoria. While the majority of the harvest is by Victorian fisheries, this stock is a straddling stock shared with South...
ORGANISATION:
Agriculture Victoria
SPECIES
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