There is a lack of practical skills for on farm fish health investigation and disease management. The National Aquatic Animal Health Technical Working Group (NAAH-TWG) April 2008 workshop highlighted - 'There is ongoing concern that there are too few suitably trained and accredited aquatic animal health professionals to service Australia’s fisheries and aquaculture industries and to ensure succession to a new generation of aquatic animal health professionals.' More recently Dr John Humphrey's presentation at the 2010 Australasian Aquaculture Conference 'Disease investigation in finfish - demystifying the diagnostic process' discussed the need at an industry level for an improvement in investigating fish health skills across the aquaculture industry.

Every state of Australia has an aquaculture industry which requires effective health investigation and disease management. Across Australia aquatic animal health training is being delivered to industry and future stakeholders by vocational trainers using units from the National Seafood Industry Package. Aquatic animal health training is also occurring on the farm informally by other industry professionals.

There is a need to bring together those delivering training, to allow them to update and improve their knowledge and practical skills to enable better delivery and ultimately better outcomes for skill development in farm fish health investigation and disease management to support Australia’s fishing and aquaculture industry.

Disease surveillance is an essential component of any aquaculture industry. Surveillance is required for early detection of new or introduced diseases, to demonstrate freedom from certain pathogens to support trade or to monitor and respond to changes in disease prevalence in a population.

However, surveillance is a specialised science and design of surveillance programs depends on the specific purpose of the surveillance and what it is expected to achieve. Inappropriate surveillance design risks either wasted resources (doing more than is necessary) or failure to achieve objectives due to poor design, inappropriate methods or inadequate sample size.

Effective surveillance is also a critical element to support trade, particularly where disease status can be used as a non-tariff barrier to trade. Understanding the principles of surveillance program design and implementation will ensure that government agencies are equipped with high quality information to support claims to freedom from diseases of trade importance, where this is appropriate or necessary.

Aquatic animal health advisors have a broad responsibility, including implementation of surveillance programs. This course will address that need by providing guidance on the design and implementation of surveillance programs for a variety of purposes and at both farm and industry level in aquatic animal industries. This will enable stakeholders and investors to have confidence that surveillance is meeting the desired objectives and supporting the industry in producing a safe and sustainable and disease free product for domestic and international markets.

Australia requires an effective system of aquatic animal health management to support Australia’s aquatic animal industries (e.g. aquaculture and fisheries, including the aquarium sector) and to protect Australia’s aquatic ecosystems and fauna. To be effective, the system needs well-trained and competent aquatic animal health professionals (including industry) with skill sets across a range of specialist disciplines and an understanding of their disciplines in an industry context. Professionals in this context refers to people working in the field of aquatic animal health including industry.