Prawn farm in for boost

DISEASE and a growing domestic demand has prompted a Mossman prawn farm to expand its operations.

Gold Coast Tiger Prawns’ 50ha facility will be expanded by 18ha when work on constructing another 16 ponds is completed next winter.

Executive director Nick Moore said the parcel of land off the Mossman-Daintree Rd and another allotment to the north was bought several years ago.

“We only started construction a month ago,” he said.

“It’s a two-stage procedure. We won’t be putting any water in the ponds until after the wet season, so we will stock the ponds in early winter.”

The company plans to run a self-sustaining breeding facility and hatchery in the long term.

Each pond holds 400,000 to -500,000 prawns.

“White spot actually put these plans back a year,” he said. “We’ve been exporting most of the 30 years we’ve been running but in recent times demand in Australia has been such that we don’t need to export.

“We’re quite happy to look after our Australian customers.

“Our company breeding program aims to domesticate the prawns further.

“We want to be self-reliant, we don’t want to rely on the wild at all.

“When you have the potential of white spot, you need to be totally independent.”

Biosecurity at the facility was ramped up in January this year after an outbreak of white spot disease, which can result in 100 per cent mortality within a few days of the onset of visible signs, in the Logan River in the state’s southeast.

Millions of dollars worth of product had to be destroyed.