Project number: 2018-047
Project Status:
Completed
Budget expenditure: $261,776.73
Principal Investigator: Susannah Leahy
Organisation: Department of Agriculture and Fisheries EcoScience Precinct
Project start/end date: 31 Oct 2018 - 31 Jan 2021
Contact:
FRDC
SPECIES

Need

This EOI was developed to address the priority, listed by Queensland RAC in the November 2017 Call for Applications, "To Determine the Proportion of Queensland East Coast (Marine and Estuarine)
Wild Barramundi Catch that is of Hatchery Origin"

- Since 2010 at least 4 million barramundi fingerlings have been released into impounded waterways, coastal lagoons, rivers (and estuaries) of Queensland

- the number of barramundi released annually varies between ~330,000 (2010) and ~794,000 (2015)

- whilst stocked fingerlings may suffer high mortality rates, stocked barramundi do migrate downstream and are caught in the wild-harvest commercial net fishery

- the magnitude of the contribution of stocking to the Queensland east coast population of barramundi is unknown

- this problem has limited quantitative stock assessment of barramundi on the Qld east coast

- DNA parentage analyses is a way to unequivocally identify hatchery origin barramundi and has been developed and validated for barramundi at JCU but it relies on having genotypes of the hatchery broodstock and is expensive per fish

- to be useful for a stock assessment any method needs to be able to be applied over multiple years to provide a time series of data, preferably hind-casting using the historic otolith collections maintained by Fisheries Queensland

- the aim of this project is to develop a cheap and effective method to identify the contribution of stocked fish to current and historic catches (via the Fisheries Queenlsand's otolith collections) to support stock status reporting and quantitative stock assessment

Objectives

1. To develop a near infrared spectroscopy model that can distinguish between wild origin and hatchery origin barramundi
2. To develop an otolith chemistry model that can distinguish between wild origin and hatchery origin barramundi
3. To compare the results from the models developed in #1 and #2 against an established method (genetics) to distinguish between wild and hatchery origin fish in wild caught barramundi
4. To evaluate and complete a cost-benefit analysis of the approaches developed

Final report

ISBN: 978-0-7345-0474-6
Authors: Leahy SM Jerry DR Wedding BBC Robins JB Wright CL Sadekov A Boyle S Jones DB Williams SM McCulloch MT Grauf S Pavich L McLennan M Sellin MJ Goldsbury J Saunders RJ
Final Report • 2022-02-24 • 5.66 MB
2018-047-DLD.pdf

Summary

Researchers from Queensland’s Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, James Cook University, and the University of Western Australia tested a range of otolith-based and genetic methods to identify hatchery-born from wild-born Barramundi. The project took place in the Dry Tropics region, where extensive historical and ongoing impoundment stocking (release of hatchery-born Barramundi into freshwater bodies) may be contributing to the downstream wild-capture marine and estuarine fishery. Fish samples were collected from the commercial and recreational wild-capture marine and estuarine fishery in 2019 and 2020, following the major Townsville floods in February 2019. The team identified a cost-effective means of using trace elements in fish otoliths to reliably distinguish hatchery-origin from wild-origin fish, measure the contribution of stocked fish to the wild population, and assess the sustainability of the wild-capture fishery.

Related research

Industry
Industry
Industry
PROJECT NUMBER • 2022-135
PROJECT STATUS:
CURRENT

Minor use permit for Chloramine-T in marine and freshwater finfish

1. Obtain data to satisfy identified gaps, and collate available data, to satisfy specified requirements of a minor use permit application for the use of Chloramine-T (N-chloro-4-methylbenzenesulfonamide sodium salt) to treat bacterial or parasite infections in marine and freshwater finfish.
ORGANISATION:
University of Adelaide