The project commenced in October 2007 and has been running for eight months. No specific milestones have been met yet but progress has been made towards achieving a number of them. The developments of the project to date are detailed in the main body of the report below.

Two Project Team meetings to discuss ideas for mini-projects have been held. The first was held in Noumea, New Caledonia, in Oct/Nov 2007 in conjunction with the SPC Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management and Biosecurity Workshops. The second was in Fiji, at USP Suva and Savusavu, in February 2008. As a result of the meetings, a number of mini-projects have been conceived and approved for development, two of these have progressed to full funding stage. At the time of this report, one had commenced. The mini-projects approved by the project team and submitted to ACIAR for approval are:

No. Title
1 Half pearl ('mabe') production in Fiji, Tonga and Kiribati
2 Culture of juvenile sandfish (Holothuria scabra) for restocking and sea ranching trials in Fiji
3 Local feed source assessment for subsistence farmers
4 Clownfish aquaculture and village grow-out trials in Vanuatu
5 Bivalve and other invertebrate spat collection trials
6 Improved farming of Macrobrachium lar
7 Assess local feed formulation for herbivorous finfish mariculture
8 Capturing juvenile fish for food security
9 Improved access to credit and grant funding for PNG fish farmers
10 Viability of the Pacific to establish specific pathogen free stocks of shrimp
11 Economic assessment of commerical-scale cage culture of Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) in a PNG reservoir
12 Growth potential of existing tilapia strains under local conditions in PICs

For more complete details of these mini-projects, refer to Appendix 1.

Various trips were carried out by project personnel and these are summarised in Appendix 2.

Several activities from FIS 2001/075 Sustainable aquaculture development in the Pacific Islands region and northern Australia have been progressed or completed during this period:
Sea Cucumber Manager's Toolbox (coordinated by Ms Hair) has been submitted to the ACIAR Publications Unit, although it won't be published until next financial year.
The compilation of all miniproject reports from FIS 2001/075 into a single large document has been almost completed (primarily by Ms Marie-Ange Hnaujie at SPC) and will soon be available in PDF format on the SPC Aquaculture Portal.
Juvenile sandfish produced in the final year of the hatchery component were on-grown in unused shrimp ponds in Ayr, north Queensland.

Ms Hair's role as Northern territory node co-ordinator of ACIAR Project FIS/2003/059 "Sea ranching and restocking sandfish (Holothuria scabra) in Asia-Pacific" has not commenced due to delays in release of funding from the Australian side of the project.

The project is now in its second year. The developments of the project to date are detailed in the main body of the report below.

Four Project Team meetings to develop concepts for mini-projects have been held:

SPC, Noumea, New Caledonia, in Oct/Nov 2007 in conjunction with the SPC Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management and Biosecurity Workshops.
Fiji, at USP Suva and Savusavu, in February 2008.
Brisbane, VIP Room, Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, Sunday 3 August 2008 in conjunction with the Australasian Aquaculture conference 2008.
SPC, Noumea, New Caledonia, in February 2009 in conjunction with the 6th SPC Pacific Heads of Fisheries Meeting.

To date, 18 mini-projects have been developed by the project team and approved by ACIAR (refer to the list below). Eleven of these have progressed to full funding stage and have commenced. The project number provides information about whether it is a small (MS) or large (ML) mini-project, the year it commenced (08 = 2008) and the order in which it was approved (01 = first project for the year, etc), NA indicates that no number has been allocated and the proposal for the mini-project has not been finalised.

No. Title
MS0801 Clown fish culture, Vanuatu
ML0801 Culture of juvenile sandfish for sea ranching trials in Fiji
MS0802 Rabbit fish culture and feed trials (capturing juvenile fish for food security), Solomon Islands
MS0803 Improving Pteria penguin (winged pearl oyster) juvenile culture and mabe production techniques in the Fiji Islands
MS0804 Recruitment patterns of pearl oysters to spat collectors in Savusavu Bay, Fiji with emphasis on the Blacklip pearl oyster (Pinctada margaritifera)
MS0805 Feasibility of establishing specific pathogen free stocks of shrimp in the Pacific (PNG, Palau, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu)
MS0806 Closing the life cycle of Macrobrachium lar, Fiji
MS0807 Grow-out of juvenile Pteria penguin, Tonga
MS0808 Assessment of Fly River herring for fish meal and as an aquafeed ingredient, PNG
MS0901 Mozambique tilapia grow-out trials, Solomon Islands
MS0902 Live rock and coral culture for the ornamental industry, Tonga
NA Local feed source assessment for subsistence farmers, Samoa
NA Economic assessment of commercial-scale cage culture of Nile tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) in a PNG reservoir
NA Sustainable and improved farming of Macrobrachium lar, Vanuatu
NA Spat collection trials (multi-species/sites), PNG
NA Grow-out of existing tilapia stocks in PICs
NA Economic modelling and business planning for PNG fish farmers
NA Testing the potential of algal concentrates for use in PIC hatcheries, Fiji

Mini-project proposals are presented in Appendix 1, progress reports on the proposals are presented in Appendix 2.

Travel carried out by project personnel is summarised in Appendix 3.

Ms Hair's role as Northern Territory node co-ordinator of ACIAR Project FIS/2003/059 "Sea ranching and restocking sandfish (Holothuria scabra) in Asia-Pacific" has ceased as funding from the Aboriginal Business Account has not been released.

This is the second Annual Report for FIS2006/138 'Developing aquaculture based livelihoods in the Pacific Islands region and tropical Australia' (DABL) and the project is in its third year.

To date, 25 mini-projects have been developed by the project team and approved by ACIAR: 19 of these are funded and research has commenced. The numbers allocated to mini-projects and listed in the Table 1 provide information about whether it is small (MS) (~<$25,000) or large (ML) (~<$50,000), the year it commenced (08 = 2008) and the order in which it was approved (01 = first project for the year). NA indicates that the mini-project proposal has not been finalised, no number allocated and funding not released.
Eight mini-project have commenced since submission of the previous Annual Report in May 2009 and these proposals are presented in Appendix 1. Progress reports for 17 current mini-projects are presented in Appendix 2. Draft final reports for two completed mini-projects are presented in Appendix 3.

Given the scope of min-projects, the scientific, capacity and community impacts arising from them are broad are discussed in more detail in the following report.

Six Project Team meetings have been held to develop concepts for mini-projects and other project topics; two of these since the previous Annual Report:

SPC, Noumea, New Caledonia, in Oct/Nov 2007 in conjunction with the SPC Ecosystem Based Fisheries Management and Biosecurity Workshops.
Fiji, at USP Suva and Savusavu, in February 2008.
Brisbane, VIP Room, Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre, Sunday 3 August 2008 in conjunction with the Australasian Aquaculture conference 2008.
SPC, Noumea, New Caledonia, in February 2009 in conjunction with the 6th SPC Pacific Heads of Fisheries Meeting.
SPC, Noumea, New Caledonia, in August 2009.
SPC, Suva, Fiji Islands, in April 2010.