The South Australian oyster industry is recognised as a major economic contributor of seafood to the state. In the 2000/01 financial year the total value of the Pacific oyster production in SA was about 12 million dollars. The industry is expected to increase by 10% per annum over the next five years resulting in the production of Pacific oysters worth nearly 20 million dollars by 2006. However, since the mortality of oysters was first noted in SA about three years ago the industry has suffered 5 to 20% losses each year of their marketable stocks, which is equivalent to 0.726 to 2.9 million dollar losses in 2002/03 and 0.96-3.8 million dollar losses in 2006/07 if mortality is not controlled and remains at the same relative level. A less optimistic forecast is that epidemiological factors could result in a much greater and possibly catastrophic rate of increase in losses in the future.

The industry views the need to understand and control the reasons for these losses as a matter of great urgency. However, the farmer’s ad-hoc approaches have failed to identify any clear direction to address the present mortalities. Due to this, the South Australian Oyster Research Council has spent considerable time discussing the matter with various researchers and has decided to support a specific research project to systematically address the issue. This proposal outlines the approaches to be taken.

If this project can achieve a 50% reduction in mortality one year after its completion, the savings to growers will be approximately 0.455-1.9 million dollars in the first year of implementation in 2006/07. These savings are more than the total investment by FRDC to this project ($364,197) and equivalent to half of the entire project cost to all parties (1.144 million dollars).

In addition, minimising the impact of mortality on the Pacific oyster aquaculture industry in SA will also strengthen the confidence of new growers and investors in this industry thereby encouraging its further expansion.