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I note with interest a report that is reasonably old now, the Australian Aquaculture Research and Innovation Strategy, full report available at http://www.australian-aquacultureportal.com/action_agenda/pdf/rdreport.pdf and am interested in the one project that one of the teams is doing on yellowtail kingfish and the extract from the report “The value and tonnage of aquaculture comes from few high value developed species, with southern bluefin tuna, pearl oysters, Atlantic salmon, prawn and edible oysters accounting for about 95% of the GVP.

By weight these species plus the developing species of trout, barramundi and mussels account for about 97% of aquaculture production.

Of the remaining 60 odd potential opportunity species, abalone, rock lobster and yellow tail king fish show some commercial opportunity. Aquaculture represents around one third of Australia’s fisheries revenue, but accounts for only 20% of the total volume of fisheries production, as a result of the higher value products produced from aquaculture relative to wild fisheries.”

I will be really interested to see the outcomes of their work and whether it can move into being a high value species.

In general this report provides a lot of interesting reading on a number of topics including some of our competitors work and what we can learn from them.

The Live fish trade is a high-margin trade, currently estimated at around $1billion annually, and largely focusing on reef fish. The key market is centred on Hon Kong, and South-West China.

With high-end fish fetching well over $100/kg, (http://www.traffic.org/home/2007/2/2/hong-kong-authorities-called-upon-to-address-illegal-fish-tr.html), fish such as the Hophead Wrasse and other tropical fish are a premium product. At the same time, high prices and demand is driving illegal fishing activity - though apparently, live fish market are slowly switching to farmed produce (http://www.spc.int/coastfish/News/lrf/8/LRF8-03-Chan.htm).

I’ve see Australia listed as a significant supplier, but I can’t find huge amounts of detail. Does anyone have any more information about the current state of live fish trade in Australia (tropical or not) to supply the HK and South-Ease Asian market?

http://www.livefoodfishtrade.org/aquaculture/index.htm

http://www.upto11.net/generic_wiki.php?q=live_food_fish_trade

http://www.spc.int/coastfish/News/lrf/8/LRF8-03-Chan.htm

The following story was posted this morning on the ABC News Website: Tuna boss threatens to quit Pt Lincoln

Mr Hagen Stehr, chairman of Clean Seas Tuna, has voiced strong concern regarding the possibility that Centrex Metals may be permitted to ship iron ore from Port Lincoln, suggesting he may relocate his business if this occurs.

This raises an interesting topic for discussion. With increasing competition for the utilisation of oceanic waters, how will this be regulated into the future? How will the zoning of appropriate waters for fish farming stack up against competing industries such as oil and gas and mineral exploration, who may be vying to use the same ‘patch’ of water?

Please post a comment and let us know what you think.   

Earlier we highlighted the work of the Stehr Group and Cleanseas Tuna 

Breeding techniques originally pioneered by Clean Seas Tuna Limited to artificially reproduce Southern Bluefin Tuna have been successfully replicated in Europe.

European research consortium Allotuna has reported productive spawning of Atlantic Bluefin Tuna – the SBT’s northern cousin – using the same strategy conceived by Port Lincoln-based Clean Seas earlier this year.

Allotuna’s international research team which includes Dr Dinos Mylanos and Prof Chris Bridges – both members of Clean Seas’ advisory panel – successfully collected over 10 million eggs from sea cage broodstock last weekend after hormone induction trials on a tuna farm in Italy.

The spawned eggs were transferred to a commercial hatchery in Bari where the larvae will feed and grow. Eggs have also been transferred to key hatcheries in France, Crete, Israel, Malta and Spain for further rearing and research.

Prof Bridges said the breeding breakthrough is a major boost for the fishing industry worldwide, which faces a critical shortage of Bluefin Tuna.

“Mediterranean Bluefin Tuna wild stocks are heavily threatened by overfishing, so much so that the fishery was closed earlier this year amid loud protests from the fishing industry,” said Prof Bridges.

“This development represents a major breakthrough in providing commercial quantities of eggs ‘on demand’ for feeding into hatchery systems. Although there is much further work to do, it is clear that this technology can be applied to solve one of the major bottlenecks in the production of sustainable aquaculture for the endangered Bluefin Tuna.”

Clean Seas Chairman, Hagen Stehr, was buoyed by the development in Europe and said it was a great endorsement of his company’s ongoing research.

“It proves that Clean Seas Tuna is right on target with its Southern Bluefin Tuna lifecycle project and that it is a matter of when, not if, commercialisation starts,” said Mr Stehr.

In March this year, Clean Seas became the first organisation in the world to create an artificial breeding regime for Southern Bluefin Tuna. The successful collection of SBT sperm and eggs spawned by captive tuna in the company’s land-based breeding facility at Arno Bay will allow the realisation of the company’s plans to close the lifecycle of SBT, potentially establish a valuable SBT sperm bank and secure sustainable production of this premium endangered species.

The breeding regime is expected to give Clean Seas the ability to at least duplicate Australia’s Southern Bluefin Tuna annual quota within the next few years and to dramatically grow the aquaculture industry on South Australia’s Eyre Peninsula without impacting on wild tuna stocks.

“We are on track with our artificial breeding regime and our primary objective remains to grow out SBT fingerlings produced from our own broodstock to sizes required by the rapidly expanding world seafood markets. This will enable year round production of SBT and lower the overall cost of production,” said Mr Stehr.

“This has extraordinary benefits for Clean Seas and its shareholders in that these fish will not be subject to the strict Australian SBT wild catch quotas. There will also be no trade barriers for their sale into major fish markets of Japan, China, the US and the European Union where natural fish stocks are severely depleted.

“We are confident that we will be able to emulate the success we have achieved with other aquaculture species such as Yellowtail Kingfish and Mulloway – and in so doing reward the faith of those who have invested in our dream and those who have worked so hard to turn it into reality.”

Source: Clean Seas Tuna Limited

The Western Australian Fish Foundation convened a workshop during 2007 to discuss the implications of the highly successful project ‘’Restocking the Blackwood River Estuary with the Black Bream Acanthopagrus butcheri’’ funded by the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation. In this project, 220,000 hatchery reared fish were marked and restocked, bred from 100 locally caught broodstock, with high survival that was monitored over 8 years.

The aim of the Workshop was to discuss the results and implications of the study, to understand the current environmental condition of the Blackwood River Estuary and to determine what issues should be addressed in the future.

The evidence presented pointed to a general decline in the health of the environment of the Blackwood River Estuary over an extended period since the early 1970s. Research also clearly indicated a significant reduction in black bream catch by recreational fishers from the system over the past 25 years.

The high survival of the introduced bream and the low cost of the project led to calls for a halt to the extraction of bream and for ongoing restocking to maintain fish stocks in the Blackwood Estuary. The complete report can be found here.

A recent radio interview of Huon Aquaculture’s Peter and Frances Bender illustrates how central innovation has been to the development of their aquaculture business.

A transcript of the radio interview can be accessed here. 

Huon Aquaculture reviews the innovations that it uses in its business here.

Seafood Innovations is making a name for itself around the world with its innovative capabilities.

Industry-scale trials have been carried out at one of Marine-Harvest’s salmon farming plants in Rogaland, Norway of an automated slaughtering machine.

The system has now been trialled in several places around the world and on several fish species.

In the Norwegian trial, salmon were pumped directly from aquaculture pens to a vessel especially outfitted for the trials. The machine kills the fish instantaneously with a blow to the head. Next, the fish are cut for bleeding and transported to a tank containing cold sterile seawater where it is bled out.

Scientists from Fiskeriforskning have confirmed that the fish are killed instantly when the machine delivers a correctly aimed blow.

An article ‘Good News for the Salmon Industry’ in a recent Fiskeriforskning newsletter confirms that the current method using CO2 will be banned from 1 July 2008. 

More details about the device including videos of it in operation can be seen here.

One of the patents associated with the device may be accessed here.

Biofouling presents a severe operational problem to aquaculture.

On fish cages, it restricts water flow through netting which reduces the supply of dissolved oxygen and the removal of excess feed and waste products.

A large mass of fouling can compete with the cultured species for food and space, and can overwhelm flotation capacity.

Current metal-based antifoulants are undesirable for aquaculture because of possible adverse environmental effects, and consumer concerns that may jeopardise market image.

Commercially available, but biodegradable compounds, or naturally occurring antifoulants extracted from marine organisms, may provide an acceptable solution by offering broad spectrum activity, and in the case of natural antifoulants, acting via chemical deterrence rather than toxicity. 

Commercialisation of antifouling technology other than paints is still in its infancy, and few field trials are reported in the literature.

Although there are many antifouling agents and compositions presently available, the methods typically used to protect an object from fouling in an aqueous environment involve applying some form of protective coating to the surface of the object.

Unfortunately, this approach is not suitable for all applications and there is a need for other means of protecting such objects from microbial- or macro-fouling.

New polymer compositions have been developed that contain antifouling agents which have surprising broad-spectrum antifouling characteristics over prolonged periods and at lower concentrations than were previously believed possible. 

Synthetic antifouling agents belonging to the families of isothiazolones, furanones, or combinations thereof have been found to be effective. This invention consists of an antifouling polymer comprising an isothiazolone or one or more furanone antifouling agents, the polymer capable of maintaining broad-spectruin antifouling activity for an extended period. The polymer is used to form a thread which may then be incorporated as part of the thread structure of a multi-stranded netting material. 

The discovery was made by researchers associated with the Aquaculture Cooperative Research Centre.

One of the patent documents related to the invention may be accessed here.

Listened to a television program on the ABC last night (Australian Broadcasting Corporation) which covered some of the themes being covered at the 2008 World Poultry Congress.  There are some interesting parallels in the issues that are being addressed in poultry and aquaculture - as aquaculture seeks to increase its scale and intensity of production.

One of the keynote speakers at the Conference, Professor David Farrell from the University of Queensland was interviewed about the key factors that have allowed the poultry industry to intensify its production so successfully. Professor Farrell identifies the following factors as key contributors:

• technology
• genetics
• feed
• management
• disease control

At the 4.20 minute mark in the video (see the link below) Professor Farrell reviews the conversion efficiency of the three major livestock industries.  He states the feed conversion ratios as:

• Poultry  - 1.7:1
• Pigs  - 2.2:1
• Cattle  - 7:1

This makes the peak feed conversion ratios in aquaculture of 0.8:1 look very good.

Can anyone help by pointing out the latest data on feed conversion ratio in aquaculture both in the lab and in the farm setting?

The video of the interview with Professor Farrell is available here. 

The World Poultry Congress site is here.