It has been acknowledged that the seafood industry is facing increased threats. Thus, the industry needs to attract more people to eat more seafood and on a more regular basis. To do this requires that the industry completely understand and anticipate what consumers value and demand, so that it can take advantage of changing consumer dietary preferences. Therefore, the industry will be better able to add value to seafood products to fulfil this demand, which will ultimately improve the industry’s profitability.

Therefore, there is a need for the seafood industry as a whole to:

• track seafood consumption—over time; more regularly; with complete geographical coverage of all major Australian cities; with greater coverage of all demographic groups; and using a panel of participants to measure real changes in their consumption and what caused such changes;
• understand consumers’ preferences and purchase patterns (and the changes over time), including light- and non-seafood buyers;
• focus on what consumers do, and the choices that they make, rather than just on what they say they will do;
• anticipate and predict chances of success for new products, including messages to do with concepts such as eco-labelling, health claims, sustainability, animal welfare, food miles, quality rating system, freshness index and so on. Ideally, this is done early in the R&D process, before too much money and resources have been spent, or where there is a risk of visible (and damaging) market failure;
• assess the effectiveness of promotional activities;
• build on the previous work of the FRDC in testing and quantifying various recommendations of these reports, especially those related to adding value to products (e.g., deboning fillets and ready-to-heat options);
• better estimate the likely market acceptance (e.g., willingness to pay, market share and differential segment response) of value added innovations.

Amoebic gill disease (AGD) research remains a high priority for the Tasmanian salmon industry. Within this framework there is a need to develop, both for research and practical reasons, non-destructive quantitative measures of AGD severity. This PhD project will develop a state of the art quantitative real time PCR (qRT-PCR) method for AGD-causing Neoparamoeba perurans. If successful this will be the first such DNA test of its type in the world for this disease. The assay will then be utilised to answer practical questions such as profiling host-parasite dynamics in vaccinated and non-vaccinated salmon prior to, during and after commercial freshwater bathing treatment, providing a rigorous measure of vaccine efficacy, and much-needed insights into the parasite loading exhibited by the different experimental salmon groups. The N. perurans DNA test will then be extended to selectively-bred salmon, correlating pathogen load with breeding values for resistance in F2 stock. This could provide a more reliable way of quantifying infection than current gill scoring methods, and will be the first time such a tool is applied to gain more precise information from a commercial salmon selective breeding program. Finally, the project will then apply the qRT-PCR test and other N. perurans molecular markers to the wider environment to address questions of population genetics, environmental reservoirs (providing much-needed information on the parasite life cycle, a prelude to in vitro culture which would benefit vaccine development), and parasite dynamics in heavily-farmed and virgin marine environments to address fundamental questions as the Tasmanian salmon industry contemplates a move towards off-shore aquaculture.
This project is a high priority for the Tasmanian salmon industry and was adopted into the CRC at its inception. This PhD project has the support of the industry. The project also has strong alignment with the industry run selective breeding program.

Yellowtail Kingfish culture is a rapidly expanding industry in Australia, particularly in rural South Australia, where it is driving the increase in the ‘other’ category of aquaculture production from ~1100 tonnes valued at ~$9 million in 2002-03 to 2000 tonnes and $17 million in 2004-05 (ABARE, 2006). Regarding future production, CST alone are projecting an increase in annual production towards 8,000 T by 2015.

CST is the largest producer of Yellowtail Kingfish in Australia having produced over 1.25 M juveniles in 2007. The company operates two Yellowtail Kingfish hatcheries at Arno Bay and Port Augusta. The production of quality larvae from hatcheries underpins the production of farmed fish and low survival and high levels of malformations significantly increase costs.

Survival of Yellowtail Kingfish juveniles in Australian marine hatcheries is very low in comparison to many other marine species such as sea bass and bream produced in larger more mature industries, for example in Europe. Of particular note, several skeletal malformations have been reported in Australia and New Zealand, although few are well documented (Yellowtail Kingfish, Cobcroft et al., 2004).

There is also high variability in hatchery survival rates and the rate and severity of deformities among production runs and commercial hatcheries.

By way of illustration, the direct benefit to Clean Seas Tuna Ltd. of reducing malformations in Yellowtail Kingfish is estimated to be $1 million p.a. In this example a reduction in malformations from 40% to 20% (on 2.0 M juveniles before quality grading) could produce a further 400,000 good quality juveniles @ $2.50 (market value) = $1,000,000.