Tasmania's science led boom in aquaculture
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[A Close] Australian science is behind a boom in aquaculture, and also making our extensive offshore fisheries more sustainable. A Parliamentary Inquiry is investigating what role science can play in the future of fisheries and aquaculture. The House of Representatives Fisheries Committee visited Tasmania to see firsthand how science is driving the expansion of key local aquaculture industries, such as oysters and salmon.
Australia’s leading science agency, CSIRO, told MP’s how it has been at the forefront of fisheries and aquaculture research.
[Dr. T Smith] There are examples research where it’s much more direct, just CSIRO to industry, some of that has been with, for example, bycatch reduction devices, and trying to improve efficiency of fishing gear, and so on. But I’d say the bulk of it has been through that improved regulation to ensure sustainability.
[I Cresswell] Well one of the things, that CSIRO wants a strong relationship with industry. So for instance fishing vessels can provide excellent platforms for collecting information, so what we call ships of opportunity, so and indeed we have strong relations with some companies in Australia who want to act responsibly, and that they want to work with us to allow us to take data, data loggers from their ships, that allow us to get more information about the ocean generally, which they know that by CSIRO investigating and understanding the marine environment better, that there will be a return to industry in the long run, or even in the short term.
[A Close] CSIRO has also been investing many millions in ocean going research vessels, so scientists can explore the seas surround Australia. The long service 66 metre Southern Surveyor will soon be replaced by the much larger 94 metre Investigator, being built in Singapore.
[T Moate] So we have the third... the world’s third largest ocean territory, and at the moment only around 12 of that’s mapped, so we know more about the surface of the moon than we know about what’s on the ocean floor, and clearly that’s critical for a whole range of issues, so things like food security and climate change, and we’ve got a lot... so we’ve got a lot to cover, and we’ve got a lot of questions that need to be answered.
The Investigator, when it comes onboard in mid 2013, actually doubles, more than doubles the capacity of Australia’s blue water research, so we have an ability to go to sea for full year operations, and significantly increases the number of scientists that can be onboard at any one time. So the Surveyor, 13 scientists can be onboard, when we go to the Investigator it will allow up to 40 scientists in any one voyage.
The new vessel, as the Southern Surveyor does, has got a trawl ramp off the back, and that allows fisheries scientists to drop nets over the back, and then sample and actually see what’s living in the water column at various depths, and see how that’s impacted by ocean temperature, where you are, what the bottom, the profile of the bottom of the ocean looks like. So again, the Investigator gives us an opportunity to have Oceanographers onboard at the same time fisheries scientists are, so they look at the interaction of those elements into Australian science questions.
[A Close] Scientist, Doctor Nick Elliott, says CSIRO research on selective breeding has helped with farming more marine species.
[Dr. N Elliott] We have a group that works on breeding programs, so development of selected breeding programs, and that covers things from Atlantic salmon, Pacific oysters, abalone, and prawns. We have a group that works on nutrition, so development of feed, the different feeds, so different ingredients in the feeds, but also the amount of feed that you then feed an animal, so it’s diet. We have a group in Geelong with the Aquatic Animal Health section there, working on diseases. As well we have, indirectly we have groups working on climate change, and the impacts of aquaculture on the environment, and of the environment on aquaculture. So we cover a broad spectrum.
[A Close] With the assistance of CSIRO research, Tasmanian salmon has grown into a multimillion dollar industry.
[Dr. A Main] Yeah look, we grow ocean trout and salmon, Atlantic salmon, and we produce about 42,000 tonnes at the moment. That equates to farm gate, or from the... or beach price of anywhere above $400 million, maybe $420 million. It’s a growing industry, and we plan to be a billion dollar industry by 2030.
[A Close] The industry acknowledges the role of science is just as important as the Apple Isles pristine waters they grow their fish in.
[Dr. A Main] Science underpins all of what we do. Science has taken us from a really small industry 20 years ago to what it is now. Science will take us to the next step as well. As we continue to grow, science will help us in improving our production area, in terms of bigger fish, healthier, happy fish, but also help with our meeting sustainability requirements as well.
[Dr. N Elliott] So our involvement with salmon has been on a number of fronts. We were involved in environmental projects, in modelling areas such as the south-east region, the Huon Estuary region, so we approached it from the environmental side. We’ve had a little bit of work in the nutrition area, but the majority of the work in the last sort of seven years has been again in the breeding area. Again there is now a commercial breeding program that’s run by the company called Saltas, which was the company was set up back in 1984 by the State Government to get the salmon farming industry established, so all salmon in the next few years will all come through their breeding program, which was established through our co-investment and R&D.
[Dr. A Main] Selective breeding allows us to produce fish that grow well, grow fast, which reduces the time they’re out on farm, out in the sea, also more resistant to things like amoebic gill disease, and fish that are more robust and that really handle being a farm fish, and they’re a happy farm fish.
[A Close] According to the Australian Marine Alliance, oysters and other aquaculture industries are making great strides in Tasmania.
[D Logan] Australia’s got one of the largest coastlines of any country in the world, and we’ve got some of the most pristine waters. We should be utilising those waters to produce a premium product. I mean the Tasmanian oyster farmers are a perfect example. Even when I export their product into Hong Kong and compete against French oyster farmers, we beat them every time, and so we have a massive competitive advantage in terms of locational(?) advantage in our regional economies, to really develop aquaculture and get a premium price around the world. There is absolutely no doubt that we can get a premium price for a premium product around the world.
[A Close] Shellfish culture on Pipeclay Lagoon breeds Pacific oysters by the millions, and sells this seed to oyster farmers around the State.
[S Parkinson] We’re a hatchery business, so we produce seed at five millimetres in size, and we sell that to the oyster grower throughout Australia, and a little bit into the export industry. So all of our base is really producing from eggs and sperm in a very scientifically, very controlled base to start with, in the first seven to ten days, and then once it goes from there it goes out onto our land based nursery systems, and out onto our farms. Those initial early stages of production really require really good control over the environment, really good control over bacterial communities, and we have to produce all its own food for the oyster, so it’s really critical that we’ve got a really good understanding of science to ensure that we get our best performance in those early days.
[A Close] Most of the hatchery staff need a strong science background to maximise production of both oysters and the green algae feed they thrive on.
[R Bennett] Here at Pipeclay Lagoon I’m a Senior Hatchery Technician, so I look after a lot of the small spat that we grow here, a lot of the algal production as well. So, yeah, I got into that... I went to the Australian Maritime College and did a degree in Marine Resource Management.
[S Parkinson] We find that we have to get young scientists, or young people out of University to come into our business, and we do all the training ourselves. So it’s very highly skilled, and very highly technical, so it’s really specific to our business, and it’s a matter for us to bring those staff in, train them up.
[R Bennett] We grow all the food that they... all the algae that they consume, so we do a lot of work in our laboratories looking at algal species, looking at different cell counts, looking at... we do a lot of water treatments and water trials, looking at lots of microbiology stuff as well, so yeah, it’s very important for us.
[A Close] Oysters remain an important export for Tasmania, with more than 3.6 million dozen sold to market each year.
[S Parkinson] Look, the oyster industry to Tasmania is really critical, it employs over 300 people in rural and regional areas in Tasmania, and its worth over $22 million to the Tasmanian economy.
[A Close] Committee Chair, Dick Adams, and the Committee, have travelled to various research facilities to see firsthand how new aquaculture and wild fisheries ventures can help feed the world.
[Hon. D Adams] But also taking science to the world, this technology, people in Africa mightn’t eat salmon, but they’ll certainly use the technology that’s being developed here in Tasmania, and other parts of the country, and also the engineering, you know the fish pens that are here behind me, the engineering from the ships and the management schemes, I believe will go out to the world and will assist us in feeding the nine billion people expected to be a part of the world in the future.
[G Lyons] The interesting one in Western Australia was octopus, and I was really interested in that because they indicated that octopus actually grows more protein than any other protein of the sea.
[D Logan] It’s very, very clear that we should be spending more money in aquaculture. Aquaculture is the poor cousin of everything else above the food chain, and we must be investing more money into aquaculture. We must also be investing more money into fisheries management, and into departments like AFMA, who have been doing a fantastic job in managing our fisheries.
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