The ASFB, through our annual conference and network of members has a forum for exchange of information. For our 2015 conference we are proposing to support the attendance of Paul Lumley the Executive Director of the Columbia River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission (CRITFC) as a keynote speaker and organise some targeted workshops prior to the conference in Darwin (lead by NT Fisheries, Bo Carne and Charles Darwin University, Alison King) and Mildura (lead by Murray-Darling Freshwater Research Centre, Lee Baumgartner & Deb Bogenhuber).

Mr Lumley has been selected as our preferred keynote based on his extensive history working with Northwest US tribes on salmon issues, particularly in the Columbia River Basin. He previously spent 17 years with CRITFC working on biological issues associated with power stations, and has also assisted in fund raising and establishing a grant program for the four Columbia River treaty tribes. Mr Lumley has indicated availability and a preliminary commitment to attend and undertake proposed workshops and present Keynote.

ASFB has a commitment to increase engagement between ASFB members and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, within the scope of the society. We recognise that to support this involves improving opportunities for Indigenous people to engage in research, fisheries management and compliance and other commercial activities. There is a great deal of interest in the ability to develop and start new commercial initiatives that maintain ongoing Indigenous interests and concerns in the fisheries management and industry and environmental rehabilitation. Australian Indigenous experience in commercial fisheries has gained momentum, and many of our members have expressed an interest in learning from International First Nations and Indigenous peoples experience.

We have in principal support for this activity through Indigenous agencies and advisory groups, including the Fisheries Research and Development Corporations Indigenous Reference Group, Northern Territory Department of Primary Industry and Fisheries, the New South Wales Aboriginal Land Council, the Murray Lower Darling Indigenous Nations.

To secure the future of Australian aquaculture, building and maintaining a sufficient level of support and trust from interested and affected communities is vital. Worldwide, there have been several examples of where aquaculture operations have been threatened because of a lack of societal acceptability. In Australia, a recent example of this has been the environmental non-governmental organisations (eNGOs) campaigns against proposed fish farm operations in Okehampton Bay on Tasmania’s east coast (Murphy-Gregory, 2017). In the Tasmanian context, attitudes toward the commercial exploitation/use of natural resources involve multi-dimensional, often conflicting, values often with a spatial dimension (see Evans, Kirkpatrick & Bridle 2018).

FRDC Project 2017-158 ‘Determinates of socially-supported wild-catch and aquaculture fisheries in Australia’ has revealed that several factors contribute towards achieving community acceptance: the perception that a company offers benefits; that it contributes to the well-being of the region and respects the local way of life; that it listens, responds and exhibits reciprocity; and that relations are based on an enduring regard for each other’s interests. These factors are often based on understanding and contributing towards achieving a certain state or condition of that which is valued by local and regional communities (e.g. a certain level of local employment, or of threatened habitat protection). Indeed, a lack of social acceptance for the aquaculture industry has often resulted in part from their practices being seen to, or in some cases actually, compromising the condition or state of what communities ‘value’ (feel is very important).

This project has been designed to examine the mix of community interests and values, and to identify how the aquaculture industry and regional communities can participate in processes of negotiation, to contribute towards the achievement of desired conditions or states of community values, using NW Tasmania as a case study.

The FRDC recently commissioned a review of the importance of seagrass habitats to fisheries sustainability in which Connolly et al. (in press) identified the "gaps in our understanding and future research needs" and made "recommendations for future research" (In Press: Report No. 98/223).

Connolly et al. (in press; point seven, section 6.4. Gaps in our understanding and future research needs) suggest that the nature of the links between fish and processes such as "feeding, protection from predators and amelioration of physical disturbance" within seagrass habitats are "poorly known". "Hard data on links between seagrass and fishery species are needed urgently" (Connolly et al., in press; section 6.5. Summary of recommendations for future research). Connolly et al. (in press) identify a need for "small scale manipulative experiments", "conducted over a large enough spatial scale" so that we can increase our capacity "to predict the effects of changes in seagrass extent on commercial fish". It is important to understand the importance of "processes linking seagrass with fish" in order to be "able to predict the effects of seagrass changes on fisheries" (Connolly et al., in press; section 6.5. Summary of recommendations for future research).

Connolly et al. (in press) also suggest that "dietary and isotope studies of piscivorous fish are required " because the role of small, non-commercial species in food chains for commercial species is only known in localized areas" (section 6.4. Gaps in our understanding and future research needs, point 12, section 6.5. Summary of recommendations for future research). Isotope studies will also address the need for research which compares the ecology (e.g. extent of assimilation of food from seagrass beds) of fishery species that spend all or only part of their life associated with seagrass" (point 3, section 6.5. Summary of recommendations for future research).

Cappo et al. (1998) reiterate Connolly et al. (in press) in suggesting that information is needed about the role of predation in structuring fish assemblages within seagrass beds. "There is a surprising lack of basic life-history information for most of the major fishery species in Australia", and "consequently a paucity of information on "critical" habitat requirements and processes such as post-recruitment mortality" (section 1.3.4 Lack of knowledge of links between life-histories and habitats).

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Currently, the Australian salmonid, tuna and pilchard fisheries, and the various Australian governments do not have an agreed approach for the response to an outbreak of VHS. The production of a disease strategy manual will provide the information upon which an informed decision can be made and will also document the agreed response to an outbreak of VHS. The existence of an agreed plan will assist in the rapid response to an outbreak of VHS and as with all disease incidents, the faster the response plan is initiated, the more likely the disease will be contained and the lower the economic impact on the industry.

This approach has been demonstrated to be effective in that a range of Disease Strategy Manuals for diseases of terrestrial animals has been available under AUSVETPLAN for the past twenty years and in that time, these manuals have been used in the response to disease incidents and proved to be highly successful.