Socio-economic determinants for industry development : the case of Australia’s Sydney rock oyster industry

Socio-economic characteristics such as age, gender, educational attainment, employment status, and income contain vital information about how an industry may respond to changing circumstances, and hence are of importance to decision makers. While some socio-economic studies exist, relatively little attention has been given to fishery and aquaculture industries in regards to their socio-economic profiles and their role in the development prospects of these industries. In this study, by way of example, we focus on Australia’s Sydney rock oyster (Saccostrea glomerata) (SRO) industry. The aim of this study was identify the socio-economic profile of the SRO industry and to illustrate the value of such information for an industry management assessment. The SRO industry has experienced a major decrease in production volume since the late 1970 and continues to be affected by prevailing diseases and increasing market competition from Australia’s Pacific oyster (Crassostrea gigas) industry. It is likely that socio-economic aspects have influenced this development within the SRO industry. The socio-economic profile was developed using data from a SRO industry farm survey which was undertaken in 2012. Findings suggested that this industry is characterised by a mature aged oyster farmer population and a part-time oyster farming approach. These characteristics may affect the farmers’ ability to drive innovation and growth. The results also suggested that there may be potential industry entry barriers present in the SRO industry which may prevent younger people taking up oyster farming. Given the results, the study concluded that the current socio-economic profile of the industry has likely contributed to the present economic status quo of the industry.

Economic analyses of Australia's Sydney rock oyster industry

This thesis provides the first comprehensive assessment of the economic viability of Australia's Sydney rock oyster industry and forms the bases for future policy and industry management recommendations. In the four separate studies of the thesis, the socio-economic profile of the industry, the market price formation dynamics within Australia's oyster market, efficiency and productivity levels and the potential impact of climate change and market dynamics on the industry's future revenue were investigated. Findings of this project suggest, for example, that market dynamics may pose a greater thread to the future development of this industry than direct effect from climate change.

Corporate-cooperative management of fisheries: A potential alternative governance structure for low value small fisheries?

While the economic and environmental benefits of fisheries management are well accepted, the costs of effective management in low value fisheries, including the research necessary to underpin such management, may be considerable relative to the total economic benefits they may generate. Co-management is often seen as a panacea in low value fisheries. Increasing fisher participation increases legitimacy of management decision in the absence of detailed scientific input. However, where only a small number of operators exist, the potential benefits of co-management are negated by the high transaction cost to the individual fishers engaging in the management process. From an economic perspective, sole ownership has been identified as the management structure which can best achieve biological and economic sustainability. Moving low value fisheries with a small number of participants to a corporate-cooperative management model may come close to achieving these sole ownership benefits, with lower transaction costs. In this paper we look at the applicability of different management models with industry involvement to low value fisheries with a small number of participants. We provide an illustration as to how a fishery could be transitioned to a corporate-cooperative management model that captures the key benefits of sole management at a low cost and is consistent with societal objectives.

Appendix 8: Quantifying the effects of environmental factors on catch rates in South-East fisheries: 1986-2006

The collection of basic environmental data by industry members was successful and offers a way of overcoming the problems associated with differences in scale between the environment and fisheries datasets. A simple method of collecting environmental data was developed that was only a small time burden on skippers, yet has the potential to provide very useful information on the same scale as the catch and effort data recorded in the logbooks. The success of this trial was aided by the natural interest of fishers to learn more about the environment in which they fish. The archival temperature-depth tags chosen proved robust, reliable and easy to use. While the use of large scale environmental data may not yield significant improvements in stock assessments for most SESSF species, fine-scale data collected from selected vessels using methods developed during this project may, in the longer term, be useful for incorporation into CPUE standardisations in the future...

Transferability of cupped oyster EST (Expressed Sequence Tag)-derived SNP (Single Nucleotide Polymorphism) markers to related crassostrea and ostrea species

Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are widely acknowledged as the marker of choice for many genetic and genomic applications because they show co-dominant inheritance, are highly abundant across genomes and are suitable for high-throughput genotyping. Here we evaluated the applicability of SNP markers developed from Crassostrea gigas and C. virginica expressed sequence tags (ESTs) in closely related Crassostrea and Ostrea species. A total of 213 putative interspecific level SNPs were identified from re-sequencing data in six amplicons, yielding on average of one interspecific level SNP per seven bp. High polymorphism levels were observed and the high success rate of transferability show that genic EST-derived SNP markers provide an efficient method for rapid marker development and SNP discovery in closely related oyster species. The six EST-SNP markers identified here will provide useful molecular tools for addressing questions in molecular ecology and evolution studies including for stock analysis (pedigree monitoring) in related oyster taxa.

Implications of gain functions in fisheries management

The appealing concept of optimal harvesting is often used in fisheries to obtain new management strategies. However, optimality depends on the objective function, which often varies, reflecting the interests of different groups of people. The aim of maximum sustainable yield is to extract the greatest amount of food from replenishable resources in a sustainable way. Maximum sustainable yield may not be desirable from an economic point of view. Maximum economic yield that maximizes the profit of fishing fleets (harvesting sector) but ignores socio-economic benefits such as employment and other positive externalities. It may be more appropriate to use the maximum economic yield that which is based on the value chain of the overall fishing sector, to reflect better society's interests. How to make more efficient use of a fishery for society rather than fishing operators depends critically on the gain function parameters including multiplier effects and inclusion or exclusion of certain costs. In particular, the optimal effort level based on the overall value chain moves closer to the optimal effort for the maximum sustainable yield because of the multiplier effect. These issues are illustrated using the Australian Northern Prawn Fishery.

Efficient designs for sampling and subsampling in fisheries research based on ranked sets

Sampling strategies are developed based on the idea of ranked set sampling (RSS) to increase efficiency and therefore to reduce the cost of sampling in fishery research. The RSS incorporates information on concomitant variables that are correlated with the variable of interest in the selection of samples. For example, estimating a monitoring survey abundance index would be more efficient if the sampling sites were selected based on the information from previous surveys or catch rates of the fishery. We use two practical fishery examples to demonstrate the approach: site selection for a fishery-independent monitoring survey in the Australian northern prawn fishery (NPF) and fish age prediction by simple linear regression modelling a short-lived tropical clupeoid. The relative efficiencies of the new designs were derived analytically and compared with the traditional simple random sampling (SRS). Optimal sampling schemes were measured by different optimality criteria. For the NPF monitoring survey, the efficiency in terms of variance or mean squared errors of the estimated mean abundance index ranged from 114 to 199% compared with the SRS. In the case of a fish ageing study for Tenualosa ilisha in Bangladesh, the efficiency of age prediction from fish body weight reached 140%.

Conference Report: International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade Conference (IIFET) 2014

The 17th Biennial Conference of the International Institute of Fisheries Economics and Trade (IIFET) was held in Brisbane in July 2014. IIFET is the principal international association for fisheries economics, and the biennial conference is an opportunity for the best fisheries economists in the world to meet and share their ideas. The conference was organised by CSIRO, QUT, UTAS, University of Adelaide and KG Kailis Ltd. This is the first time the conference has been held in Australia. The conferences covered a wide range of topics of relevance to Australia. These included studies of fishery management systems around the world, identified key issues in aquaculture and marine biodiversity conservation, and provided a forum for new modelling and theoretical approaches to analysing fisheries problems to be presented. The theme of the conference was Towards Ecosystem Based Management of Fisheries: What Role can Economics Play? Several sessions were dedicated to modelling socio-ecological systems, and two keynote speakers were invited to present the latest thinking in the area. In this report, the key features of the conference are outlined.