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

Vibrio parahaemolyticus can live in sediments and waters year-round and generally proliferates in the water column when water temperatures are greater than 14degC. V. parahaemolyticus are rarely isolated from seawaters below 10degC, though some cold-tolerant strains have been isolated overseas. The concentration of V. parahaemolyticus in the water column increases as the water temperature increases. Oysters naturally accumulate and depurate V. parahaemolyticus through filter-feeding, but once oysters are no longer underwater depuration can no longer occur and V. parahaemolyticus levels increase quickly unless the oysters are less than 10degC. Recent outbreaks in South Australia have been very unusual in that they have occurred in winter-spring. Other environmental factors including salinity, chlorophyll and turbidity have also been linked to vibrio prevalence, but relationships are inconsistent. Internationally some growing areas have established relationships between V. parahaemolyticus and other environmental parameters such as suspended matter, chlorophyll a and dissolved organic carbon, although this varies between areas and is not consistent.

Little is known around why outbreaks have begun occurring in Australia and Vibrios are an increasing risk to commercially produced oysters in Australia. The prevalence of vibriosis is globally linked to the effects of climate change, aging populations, dietary changes and improved detection methods. It is vital that all available relevant environmental data associated with these recent outbreaks is recorded and made available for future interrogations. The identification of data gaps and tools that could be used to identify and assess potential vibrio risk factors may help guide where additional effort is required to assist future understanding of this complex and emerging food safety issue in Australia. This project is important to help defend current demand, consumer trust and safety in oysters.

The need for this project is to activate and engage industry in viable options towards climate resilience by 2030. This includes the need to demonstrate that immediate options exist and are viable and meaningful, while also gaining support for a clear plan to transform the industry and supply chain with support both internally and beyond the sector. The key needs are:

01 | Industry awareness of the problems and solutions around climate change and resilience is below where it needs to be to activate broad transformation. There is little action towards climate resilience (1 player) in comparison to other agricultural sectors.

02 | There will be increasing competition within the protein market to validate and promote sustainable practices and positive contributions to the environment/climate.

03 | Leaders and innovators in the industry are attempting to act in isolation with few resources to support industry and supply chain coordination and acceleration.

04 | Change around the edges that can be achieved by some stakeholders operating alone will not deliver the transformation at a scale or pace that is required to meet growing and broadly felt consumer expectations that indicate demonstrable action on climate change.

05 | There is a surplus of tools, resources and research around climate change and resilience, but to this point, little of that work has been translated into forms fishers find usable and valuable.

06 | There is a need to identify early adopters and innovators in the space to lead new ways operating into the future.

07 | There is an FRDC funded project to undertake a Lifecycle Assessment being concluded early November. This work has been preliminarily identified fuel, transport, and refrigeration as key challenges requiring new solutions/opportunities for industry.

08 | Propulsion and fuel have been identified as key challenges in wild catch fisheries achieving climate resilience and reducing carbon emissions, and will be the focus of this project.

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

Australia’s fisheries research agencies all conduct stock assessments of varying complexities to assess the status of key fish stocks. However, the modelling approaches taken, data analyses that underpins the stock assessments and the level of peer review that is undertaken are variable (Dichmont et al. 2018, Haddon et al. 2018). The Status of Australian Fish Stocks (SAFS; Flood et al. 2016) program has aimed to make the reporting of these assessments consistent among jurisdictions. Additionally, in recognition of the data limited nature of many of the species being assessed in SAFS there has also been work undertaken to train jurisdictional stock assessment staff in data limited stock assessment techniques (Haddon et al. 2019). However, while there are a substantial amount of modelling tools available, most jurisdictions have stock assessment scientists that are model users rather than developers. Consequently, there is a need to provide guidance on how to use these appropriately so as to strengthen the quality of the outputs of the models. Developing guidance (defined as help and advice about how to do something or about how to deal with problems) is important and a set of stock assessment guidelines that describes each method currently used in Australia, outlines the method, required biological and fishery data, levels of uncertainty, and pros and cons is an important facet to demonstrating best practice in management of Australia’s fisheries. The guidance will provide transparency in the modelling process and has the potential to remove or moderate controversy regarding modelling outputs and the resulting management implications. This guidance (hereafter guidelines) are not intended to be prescriptive but provide guidance on a suite of methods from full-blown bioeconomic models and integrated assessments (e.g., SS3) through to data-poor approaches such as catchMSY.