CSIRO REPORT :

Australia's top notch prawn farm industry

7 December 2000

Australia's $A 50 million farmed prawn industry is at the leading edge of environmentally friendly prawn farming, an international conference in Brisbane was told this week.
CSIRO Marine Research scientist, Dr Nigel Preston, says that a combination of good science, strict regulations and a high level of industry and community awareness has placed Australia in a leading role.

"Australia's rapidly growing prawn farming industry has enjoyed a healthy investment in collaborative research, relative to the size of the industry," he says.
Despite comprising only 0.3 per cent of the world's farmed prawn production, the carefully regulated and researched prawn farming industry in Australia has contributed much to international understanding of sustainable farming practices, according to Dr Preston.

"By shedding light on the way nutrients are cycled in the pond ecosystem, the research has significantly advanced the scientific basis for improving water quality within ponds and sustaining pond productivity.

"A key early result is that settlement ponds, which give nutrients time to collect in the sediments, significantly improve effluent water quality, reducing any adverse environmental impacts on adjacent coastal environments, " he says.

"By trapping these nutrients we may also be able to grow secondary products such as edible oysters and algae for use as agricultural fertilisers, and recirculate the water back through the pond system."

"The research has also resulted in information about nutrient inputs from feed and other sources, precise measurements of prawn farm effluent, treatment options, and an understanding of the fate of the effluent once it is discharged."

The CSIRO research, funded by the Cooperative Research Centre for Aquaculture, the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation and prawn farmers, has therefore addressed national and international concerns about pond management practices that can result in poor water quality, poor health of farm stocks, low production and adverse environmental impacts on adjacent coastal lands.

Already information from the research has been used by farmers to improve husbandry practices and design treatment facilities. It has also been used by regulators to update licence conditions and to improve the planning of where future aquaculture developments should be sited, says Dr Preston.

"Our improved understanding of effluent processes is also assisting in the establishment of scientifically valid environmentally sustainable development performance criteria for industry. Once implemented such criteria would boost domestic and international recognition of the Australian prawn farming industry as responsible environmental citizens."

A practical, hands-on outcome has been the development of prawn pond management software known as PONDMAN, which most Australian prawn farmers are now using as a management tool. The software provides a way of collecting and storing data on prawn pond characteristics, allowing farmers to better understand what is working in the interests of prawn farm efficiency and why.

The CSIRO research is part of a wider multi-agency project of the CRC for Aquaculture to enhance the production efficiency and environmental management of prawn aquaculture.
There are 500 ha of prawn farm ponds throughout Queensland, New South Wales and the Northern Territory producing a total of 2,700 tonnes annually valued at A$50 million.
Dr Preston presented a summary of prawn farming in Australia to delegates from 20 countries along with speakers from Asia, the Americas and Africa.

The Shrimp Farming and the Environment Conference, which ends today, has been globally funded and organised by the United Nations FAO, the World Bank, the Network of Aquaculture Centres in Asia-Pacific and the World Wide Fund for Nature.