Economic and social value of Victoria’s wildcatch and aquaculture industries
Economic and social value of Victoria’s wildcatch and aquaculture industries
Abstract
Victoria has had a professional seafood industry for over 170 years. It’s small relative to those of other Australian states but it’s highly diverse, with a wide variety of fishing and farming methods and target species. Wild-catch fisheries stretch along the Victorian coast from Portland to Mallacoota and through inland waterways. These fisheries include state licences, which tend to be smallscale, daily operations within three nautical miles of the coast, and Commonwealth permits that allow offshore fishing over multiple days. There are a number of visible fishing ports, but in addition small-scale fishing operations are dispersed along the coast and inland in towns with no obvious fishing infrastructure. Aquaculture is similarly diverse. It operates throughout Victoria along the coast and inland, but with hubs of greater activity. Most aquaculture production and value lies with a few large farms, dominated by abalone on the south-west coast, mussel mariculture in Port Phillip Bay and salmonid aquaculture concentrated in the Goulburn Valley. While wild catch fisheries production has fallen over the past 20 years, aquaculture production has been growing.
The post-harvest sector in Victoria is one of the most significant in Australia. Processors, marketers and wholesalers are concentrated in Melbourne and handle Victorian-produced seafood as well as interstate and international imports and exports. Until this study, there was little data on the economic and social contributions of professional fisheries and aquaculture in Victoria. Existing data calculated only the gross value of production, the number of licence owners, the number of seafood business owners or professional fisheries and aquaculture employees. There was no reporting of the broader ‘multiplier’ economic effects or the social and cultural benefits of having a seafood industry in Victoria.
Read more… Article source: https://www.uts.edu.au/sites/default/files/2020-06/uts-fass-victoria-fisheries-aquaculture-factsheet.pdf