Research to keep seafood sustainable
AQUACULTURE offers an efficient and sustainable source of protein in Australia, but JCU PHD Candidate Phoebe Arbon has warned it is equally important to understand threats facing the industry.
Two years into her PHD at JCU, Ms Arbon is investigating the significance of different pathogens that are found in black tiger prawn aquaculture in Australia.
She said that the farmed prawn production industry is an important contributor to Australia’s food security.
“With a growing population, our food demands are rapidly increasing. Food production industries like beef and pork— which require a lot of land, water and feed resources — have high feed conversion ratios and carbon emissions,” Ms Arbon said.
“Comparatively, seafood production has conversion ratios that are relatively low and is one of the most efficient animal protein production systems.”
Looking to the future, Ms Arbon said we need to investigate how to best support these industries.
“With advancing technologies, seafood production is only going to become even more efficient and sustainable,” she said.
But what happens when a
prawn gets sick? While humans can’t contract these pathogens detected on prawn farms, the diseases can cause mortality in prawns or negatively impact their growth cycle.
“Aquaculture has the potential to meet a lot of our nutritional demands and provide food security in the future, but diseases in aquaculture are a very big barrier to the improvement of production, efficiency and sustainability in the industry,” Ms Arbon said.
“Prawns are extremely challenged by diseases. One reason for this is because they lack the same immune components that vertebrates have.
“Fish, for example, can be vaccinated like a human because they produce antibodies that can be used to fight the infection. Prawns are very different and vaccinating them cannot currently provide any long-term protection against diseases.”
Prevention is the best cure when it comes to prawn pathogens according to Ms Arbon, highlighting the importance of biosecurity in ensuring Australia’;s prawn stocks are healthy and disease-resistant.
“The Australian prawn industry is still relatively reliant on wild-caught prawns to produce seed stock, so we analysed these wild-caught prawns to assess the risk of collecting stock infected with pathogens and how likely this is to introduce pathogens into farm production systems,” she said. “Our research also investigates the potential for these farmed prawns to be infected with more than one pathogen.
“We are considering these multiple infections in our experimental pathogen challenge trials which allows for more robust experimental findings. These trials will demonstrate the significance of the viruses to production and elucidate their impact on the health of farmed prawns while considering the potential effects of co- infections.”
Ms Arbon hopes that the methodologies and techniques developed through her research will support a better understanding of diseases in Australian prawn aquaculture.
“Importantly, as the Australian industry shifts towards domestication of prawn stock, we will hopefully have developed knowledge to support the production of disease-resistant lines and can springboard off that,” she said.