The bulk of the research that has been carried out for the South East Fishery (SEF) over the last decade has focussed on the collection of biological data, assessment of the status of fish stocks, research into the economics of the fishery, and the impact of fishing on the environment.  In recent years, the need for a broader research and development (R&D) coverage to address whole of supply chain needs of the SEF has been recognised by Industry, AFMA, the Management Advisory Committees (MACs) and the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation. The SEF Industry Development Subprogram was established to help develop a whole of supply chain R&D strategy for the SEF and initiate new R&D projects to implement the strategy through increasing the value of SEF products by value-adding to fish products, adopting new technologies and improving utilisation of catches.  To enable this, a Steering Committee of Industry representatives with expertise in the SEF whole of supply chain was formed to help foster and prioritise R&D into industry development areas.  This report summarises the progress of the Subprogram over the first 18 months of operation to June 2001.

Two Subprogram meetings have been held.  In the first, the role of the FRDC Subprogram and Steering Committee was outlined and the broad scope of the R&D strategy was developed.  At the second meeting a range of pre-proposals were considered and we worked towards development of other projects that would fall within the scope of our priority R&D.  We initially focused on two priority R&D areas: skills/training and fish waste utilisation. It was recognised that there was a need for skill development and training across the fishery’s supply chain, especially in areas such as product handling, food safety and OH&S issues. We are currently working with the relevant national and state seafood training bodies to plan and implement a training package relevant to the SEF.  The significant level of fish wastes that are discarded by the industry from both the catching and processing sectors was another priority area.  It was agreed to promote and support R&D that aimed to improve the utilisation of non-quota bycatch species by investigating suitable and cost-effective techniques to process the wide variety of discarded fish waste into products such as aquaculture feeds, silage, fish mince, fishmeal.  Another waste minimisation option that is being explored is the use of value adding, improved promotion and targeted marketing campaigns to increase retention of certain low-value species that are usually discarded.  Workshops to discuss training and waste utilisation R&D are planned for October 2001 with the aim of submitting a suite of related projects for funding by FRDC and other agencies.

The Subprogram’s first project entitled “The E-boat - implementation of an on-board electronic data collection and transmission system” began in May 2001.  Jointly funded by AFFA and FRDC, the project is progressing well following an extensive phase of software development and modification to make it user-friendlier to the fishers.  A working presentation of the software has been given at a number of venues and has received positive feedback from the industry groups. Work is progressing to enable the direct transfer of logbook data from fishers to AFMA to meet their SEF1 requirements.  Trial data transfers have proceeded well and real data transfer is expected to take place early 2002.  The potential for data from the E-boat software to directly feed into E-commerce sites, such as SFM-live, is being investigated. 

Although slow to start, the Subprogram has achieved many of its initial objectives.  The process of getting people together from across the whole of supply chain and networking has been valuable and is proving fruitful with respect to communication, advice and feedback from all sectors of the Industry.  It is expected that within the next year or two, the full benefits of the development of the SEF Industry Development Subprogram should be realised with the initiation of a number of R&D projects under the umbrella of the Subprogram.  The FRDC has supported a proposal to continue the Subprogram for a further two years from July 2001 to June 2003.  After this time, the Steering Committee believes there should be a review of the progress of the Subprogram and the value of its future operation.

Keywords: South East Fishery, industry development, value-adding, training, waste utilisation.