The South Australian seafood industry is possibly the fastest growth industry in the State having climbed rapidly to a position of the State’s 5th largest export industry with a production value of almost $650 million. The entire seafood industry has doubled in size every two and a half years since 1994 and is expected to break the $2 Billion barrier before 2010. The strongest growth has been recorded in the aquaculture sector of the seafood industry which is now nearing $400 million worth of annual value.

The aquaculture industry is made up of land based and marine based operators. The largest South Australian sectors are all marine-based with tuna, oysters and marine finfish all strongly performing. The relatively new mussel industry is currently in a major expansion phase. The most significant land based industry is abalone.

The aquaculture industry in South Australia has expanded considerably over the past twelve months, however there are little or no available disease emergency management plans or training courses for this industry. With further rapid expansion planned for the marine finfish industry, the tonnages of farmed fish will rise very rapidly over the next eight to ten years. There are currently approximately 3000 tonnes of fish currently in the water (non tuna) and this figure is expected to rise to some 10,000 tonnes by 2010. Research priorities have centred on the reproduction and grow-out of new species and have often overlooked the threat of specific disease(s) until they occur.

It is imperative for the successful management of aquatic animal health issues that an immediate, proactive approach be adopted. A continuing reactive stance towards disease management is hazardous, causing high risk to both the industry and the environment, and greater exposure to negative public sentiment, let alone the potential scale of the economic loss.

The aquaculture industry has made serious attempts to train as many personnel as possible and for the past two years the two principal training providers, the Australian Fisheries Academy and the Spencer Institute of TAFE have been training record numbers of personnel.

Seafood Training SA is the industry’s peak body on all training and development support matters. The organisation is the only seafood body in the State that has representation from all industry sectors and peak bodies as well as relevant Government agencies and undertakes detailed research on industry training needs.

Following a series of discussions with sector bodies last year, it was identified that the industry lacked relevant training in emergency management procedures for aquatic animal health. Whilst basic training in aquatic animal health and emergency procedures forms part of the new Seafood Industry Training Package, a large number of both employers and employees have no formal training or access to materials that meet their specific needs.

There is currently an urgent need to develop a number of structured Aquatic Animal Health Emergency Procedures Manual and accompanying training workshop(s) specifically for the each of the State’s burgeoning aquaculture industry sectors and ensure that all staff from farm hand operatives through to farm managers are conversant with the procedures.