Throughout 2017-2019 FRDC established the Fish and Chip awards as a way to create debate around seafood, raise its profile and use this as a vehicle to promote information about sustainability, fisheries management and the R&D being undertaken to underpin it. The approach worked very well generating more than 90,000 votes, hundreds of media articles and millions of consumer views of that media coverage.

There is a need to ensure the base developed in the first three years is not lost and that SIA continues to build on it and centralise consumer-facing activities under the industry’s brand, Great Australian Seafood.

SIA will continue to deliver retailers, consumers and media information on the sustainability of Australian seafood, underutilised species, FishNames, CoOL, along with any other relevant R&D and extension.

In this initial year of SIA management, we will investigate the opportunities for sponsorship of the program and develop a timeline for a self-sustaining model.

There is also a need for SIA to demonstrate how an activity such as foodservice and consumer awards can deliver tangible results. To do this, SIA is looking to capture consumer opinion, engage retailers and measure behaviour.

Commercial in confidence. To know more about this project please contact FRDC.

This project will undertake the critical science required for the next step of closed-cycle Tropical Rock Lobster production, the grow-out of hatchery-produced juvenile lobsters in sea raft enclosures, with research trials in the pristine waters of northern Western Australia. There are multiple gaps in knowledge that must be investigated to support the development and evaluation of this production technology to meet market demands. The project partners bring expertise across the production-to-market pipeline and we will focus on six research areas: environment; raft design; translocation, lobster health and biosecurity; feeding strategies; lobster growth performance; and, premium diverse market acceptability. We will evaluate production systems, comparing sea raft productivity with onshore culture, to de-risk and attract quality investment in a brand-new grow-out aquaculture industry by current and new aquaculture businesses.

All aspects of the production research will include training of personnel and documentation of procedures that will be made available to new lobster grow-out producers in Australia through project participants. The project team will regularly communicate progress with stakeholders, including government (national, state and territory, local), jurisdiction agencies, Traditional Owners in research trial areas, community, aquaculture producers, training and research providers. At the end of the project a Field Day event will share the current status and production models for consideration by existing and new businesses. Industry value of $160 million is projected by 2030, with future potential of over $500 million p.a. that creates 1,000 direct jobs, 900 of those in Northern Australia, for people in feed manufacture, grow-out, downstream processing/distribution and marketing.

The project outcomes are directly aligned with the Food & Agribusiness Growth Centre’s (Food Innovation Australia Limited-FIAL) vision to grow the share of Australian food in the global marketplace – as it captures a unique opportunity for growing tomorrow’s food and contributing to the $200 billion possibility for Australian agri-businesses by 2030.

Epidemiologic modelling to predict the disease outcomes for carp populations in Australia are important to predict the efficacy of KHV for biocontrol (Durr et al 2019). Key aspects of KHV delivery into a target carp population will be the time of year that infected fish are released and understanding the most significant ways in which the virus is spread between fish. One mechanism for virus delivery proposed is the introduction of “trojan” carp into the target population. Depending on the temperature at which they are held, carp may be subclinically infected and later go on to shed KHV and develop disease when the water temperature is increased (Sunarto et al., 2019). A release pathway that uses trojan carp that are infected with KHV by intraperitoneal (IP) injection requires knowledge of the survival time and detailed excretion dynamics (including at and after death) under different conditions for virus dose, water temperature and age/health/life history of the fish.
Modelling highlights the important influence of transmission dynamics on disease outcomes. A key for KHV models is to determine if direct transmission (i.e. requiring direct fish-to-fish contact) is more important than indirect transmission (whereby naïve carp can be infected by KHV shed into the water). This will determine the relative efficacy of KHV biocontrol during carp aggregation (Durr et al., 2019).
The present study will use a laboratory infection model to evaluate KHV replication and shedding in injected carp. Further, the relative importance of direct and indirect transmission of KHV will be compared. This will inform epidemiologic models to improve predictions and management of a controlled KHV release.
References
Sunarto A., Moody, N.J.G. and Durr, P.A. Essential studies on cyprinid herpesvirus 3 (CyHV-3) prior to release of the virus in Australian waters: Seasonality studies. FRDC. Canberra.