Tsunami, fisheries and 10 years of research partnership in Indonesia

A celebration has been held on 28 January 2009 in South Sulawesi to mark the involvement of the University of New South Wales researchers in a 10-year partnership on sustainable, brackish-water aquaculture in Indonesia.

Funded by ACIAR and the Ministry of Marine Affairs and Fisheries, Indonesia, the partnership has also involved the Research Institute for Coastal Aquaculture (RICA) and Gadjah Mada University.

Australian project leader Dr Jes Sammut said that the collaboration has allowed the development of low cost technologies to remediate soil problems and help farmers to return abandoned ponds to profitable production levels.

“The ACIAR projects trained the team in soil assessment and management, soil mapping and pond engineering. With these skills we have been able to conduct research to find solutions to soil-related problems and help farmers improve their production,” said Dr Akhmad Mustafa, the Indonesian project leader.

“The research was conducted on our farms and we learned a lot about how to identify and manage soil problems to increase production directly from the researchers,” said Mr Akib, a farmer involved in the project.

The pond remediation methods developed by the project were quickly applied to the farming communities in Aceh after the Tsunami damaged over 20,000 ha of ponds. The ACIAR projects at RICA also established a national soil testing laboratory and a land suitability mapping facility to support the research. The team has mapped over 470,000 ha of problem soils in Aceh and offered technical advice on how to manage them.

Link to media release:

http://www.science.unsw.edu.au/news/tsunami-fisheries-and-10-years-of-research-partnership-in-indonesia/