The prawn aquaculture industry is committed to a strategy of enhanced farm biosecurity to reduce the potential for production losses caused by disease agents. This has been brought to the forefront of development priorities for industry by the recent white spot virus incursion into southern Queensland, but it is also driven by considerations that current farming practices are vulnerable to other disease agents that could emerge in the future. It is well recognised by aquaculture disease experts and the industry that a critical pathway for disease incursion is via the water sourced from local waterways which for Australian prawn farms is the adjacent estuarine creek or river. Treatment of farm influent water to eliminate or reduce disease agent load, particularly that associated with live vectors of disease, such as crustaceans or fish, is seen as the most basic course of action to address farm exposure to this risk.

In consultation with local and international technical experts, industry has identified that filtration and some type of chemical disinfection is the most practical approach for prawn grow-out farms. However the level of information available on design criteria and effectiveness of proposed treatment systems is lacking, particularly in relation to Australian farming conditions. Information derived from overseas experiences of farming prawns under threat of multiple diseases has been instructive, but due to significant differences in farming systems, the local industry sees a need to generate additional information that has direct relevance to Australian farms and practices. Given the anticipated high investment by farms to implement significant upgrades to water treatment practices, improved information for systems design parameters and relative risk reductions for different options under consideration are a high priority.