70 March 2009 Farming Bath Sponges (Continued from page 22) Fig. 7. A Torres Strait Islander sponge diver, monitoring the farming experiments. tal management. While regulatory approvals from environmental managers are yet to be granted for either location, the data look positive. The farming response in both locations has been great, with sponges growing quickly and showing high survival in the best treatments. Indigenous Australians at the Palm Islands have ground truthed the experimental data with market analysis and development of a business plan. They have also developed a commercially viable model that will provide employment for 32 people in a community that currently endures over 90 percent unemployment. In Torres Strait the community has begun a similar process to arrive at a commercial production model that will work for them. Sponge farming has the potential to become more than a new sustainable marine industry for Australia. It could also present a platform for training, employment and economic development in communities that have limited opportunities for commerce and enterprise (Figure 7). Notes 1Australian Institute of Marine Science, PMB No 3, Townsville, QLD 4810 Australia *Corresponding author. Phone: +61 7 47534444; Email: a.duckworth@aims.gov.au years of growth would guarantee a reliable and sufficient source of sponges to the market. Survival of farmed Coscinoderma sp. and R. odorabile varied among the six farming sites (Figure 6), being highest at Pelorus 2 with 100 percent and 97 percent alive after 15 months. These survival results are outstanding and again highlight the potential of commercially farming bath sponges at the Palm Islands. At the remaining five sites, most sponge mortality occurred during the first few months. During that period, sponges are healing their cut surfaces so some mortality may result from pathogens infecting their exposed tissues. Indigenous Australians Besides developing the best farming method and selecting good farming sites, current research is addressing a range of other issues critical to underpinning the establishment of commercial sponge farms in Torres Strait and the Palm Islands. These include determining the optimal explant size for best farm production, investigating the abundance and size frequency patterns of wild populations to establish seed-stock harvest regimes, determining the genetic structure of sponge populations and connectedness for setting appropriate translocation protocols and establishing exactly what sponges are removing from the water column for food. Thus, as a complete package, research will support the establishment and regulation of sponge farming with a knowledge base for best practice farm production, as well as sustainable environmenNew, M.B. 1995. Status of freshwater prawn farming: a review. Aquaculture Research 26: 1-44. Rutherford, S. 1994. An investigation of how freshwater prawn cultivation is financed. Bangladesh Aquaculture and Fisheries Resource Unit (BAFRU), Dhaka – 1212. Uddin, M.J., S. Dewan, M. Ashrafuzzaman and M.M. Haque. 2001. Growth and yield of GIFT (Oreochromis niloticus) and Thai silver barb (Barbodes gonionotus Bleeker) in rice fields and their effects on the yield of rice. Bangladesh Journal of Fisheries Research 5(1):29-35. Williams, D. 2003. Freshwater prawn farming in Bangladesh. Fish Farmer 26(5):24-27. Prawn-Fish-Rice Farming (Continued from page 41) Monoyama K. and T. Matsuzato. 1987. Muscle necrosis in culture kuruma shrimp (Penaeus japonicus). Fish Pathology 22:69-75. Nash G., S. Chinabut and C. Limsuwan. 1987. Idiopathic Muscle Necrosis in the freshwater prawn, Macrobrachium rosenbergii (de Man), Cultured in Thailand. Journal of Fish Diseases 10:109-120. Nunes, A.J.P., P.C.C. Martins and T.C.V. Gesteira. 2004. Produtores sofrem com as mortalidades decorrentes do virus da mionecrose infeccisa (IMNV). Panorama da Aqüicultura (May/June 2004) 83:37–51. Rigdon R.H. and K.N. Baxter. 1970. Spontaneous necroses in muscles of brown shrimp, Penaeus aztecus Ives. Transactions of the American Fisheries Society 99:583-587 Stentiford, G.D. and D. M. Neil.2000. A rapid onset, post-capture muscle necrosis in the Norway lobster, Nephrops norvegicus (L.), from the West coast of Scotland. Journal of Fish Diseases 23:251-263. Tang, K.F.J., C. R. Pantoja, B. T. Poulos, R. M. Redman and D. V. Lightner. 2005. In situ hybridization demonstrates that Litopenaeus vannamei, L. stylirostris and Penaeus monodon are susceptible to experimental infection with infectious myonecrosis virus (IMNV). Diseases of Aquatic Organisms 63:261-265. Tonguthai, K. 1992. Diseases of the freshwater prawn Macrobrachium rosenbergii in Thailand. Pages 89-95 In M. Shariff, R.P. Subasinghe and J.R. Arthur, editors. Diseases in Asian Aquaculture I. Fish Health Section, Asian Fisheries Society. Manila, Philippines. (Continued from page 15) Signs of IMF
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MjExNDY=