Ana Rubio-Zuazo
Fisheries Research and Development Corporation Award Winner
Getting more from oyster farming
The Sydney rock oyster, with annual production worth more than $35 million, is the most valuable aquaculture industry in New South Wales.
Many oyster farmers have now upgraded their processing equipment to improve productivity and profitability. Using sophisticated automatic graders, they can now clean, count and sort large number of oysters quickly and efficiently.
According to Dr Ana Rubio, an oyster research consultant, these graders could also help assess oyster lease performance.
“Most new graders can record the characteristics of every oyster sorted, so we have an opportunity to collect high quality growth and growing area performance data,” said Ana.
“By setting up a practical monitoring protocol to be used with the grading machines, very little extra effort would be required to collect consistent, accurate and useful data.”
Ana aims to develop a system that enables growers to quantify oyster productivity and oyster lease performance.
“By developing standardised performance indices for different growing areas within an estuary, we’ll be able to monitor and compare lease productivity,” said Ana.
“And by combining this information with environmental, climatological or hydrological data for the growing areas, we can identify the most suitable and most productive oyster growing areas.”
This data will complement oyster lease GIS maps maintained by NSW DPI Fisheries, helping to guide industry effort and investment towards the most productive growing areas.