Aquafin CRC - Atlantic Salmon Aquaculture Subprogram: model development for epidemiology of Amoebic Gill Disease
Development of a user-friendly desktop tool based on existing Atlantis runs
Fisheries Managers often need to rapidly explore possible impacts of a range of potential changes to a fishery (for example, changes in fuel and fish prices, biophysical, environmental and economic drivers of the fishery, and alternative fisheries management regulations). Unfortunately, the preparation and implementation time involved in an end-to-end ecosystem modeling project (e.g. the Alternative Management strategies for commonwealth fisheries) means that delivery time is typically years (likely 3-4 years) at a potential cost of millions. This is simply too slow to be of use to many of the rapid turn around questions management bodies are presented with. However, the decisions that need to be made would benefit from system-level strategic information if it were available; and fisheries managers and other stakeholders, including the fishing industry, would gain significant insights into the fishery from the ability to explore such changes without the need to undertake specific research projects.
To this end the best approach is to preemptively create a library of runs that span a large number of potential management strategies and scenarios of interest and to have it to hand as an accessible data source through a user-friendly interface that can be explored from the user’s desktop. This need has been identified by key stakeholders, like the AFMA managers and lead to the ComFRAB call for this project. In the short term this tool is best developed and applied around a library of runs set up for southeastern waters and the SESSF, but the benefit can be much broader than that – both in terms of creating a framework for future use with other Atlantis (or multispecies) model output and indirectly by providing a way of interrogating a complex marine system to gain general insights into their function and implications of different forms of management.
Final report
Aquaculture Diet Development Subprogram: development of marine fish larval diets to replace Artemia
Scallop aquaculture: The growth, processing and marketing of live scallops
Rural R and D for Profit: Easy-Open Oyster automation
To develop a national marine safety extension resource toolkit and to trial with all fisheries jurisdictions
There have been significant resources (financial and physical) allocated to workplace health and safety (including mental health, training and systems for data collection) over the last 15 years in the commercial fishing industry .However the majority have been “stand alone" and there has been limited extension for the wider industry to adopt. Although there have been some positive moves in the area of health and safety such as the SRL Clean Green program and the Spencer Gulf Prawn fishery, there has largely been a “silo” approach to the various initiatives across the commercial fishing industry and a real lack of coordination that can lead to a lack of communication, adoption and the lack of visibility of tools to those that need it. This is due in part to the nature of the industry that tends (overall) not to have the willingness to adopt something that another fishery has implemented, fragmentation of industry in some states and within a fishery. Additionally, the absence of a peak national body until June 2017 also created a gap for driving nationwide issues including workplace safety and health initiatives. Through the building of these networks and the establishment of on the ground champion in each state to influence industry including the building of capacity/ resources within the peak bodies to embrace workplace health and safety on behalf of their members, improved awareness and adoption of safety programs should occur. To do this State peak bodies require support to enable them to add value for their members and therefore utilise existing and currently funded research and develop extension processes.It is unknown to what level industry uptake of the current AMSA requirements for a safety management system (SMS) has occurred. It is not well understood by industry that the existence of a SMS to meet AMSA requirements only goes half way for legal compliance. Each states Worksafe body also has legislation that requires compliance with safe work practices. It is desirable to produce a SMS that meets both sets of legislation and develop a tool that can be used to assess the uptake of the initiatives through the peak bodies as well as developing a robust set of statistics to benchmark the performance.