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Recurrent production failure and low yields in land-based, brackish water aquaculture are often associated with disease outbreaks, unsuitable pond management practices, and/or limiting environmental factors such as soil properties, water quality and hydrological conditions. In Indonesia, the rapid expansion of land-based aquaculture systems often involves the construction of earthen ponds in unsuitable environments due to a lack of effective site selection criteria and land capability assessment techniques. Similarly, intensive shrimp farming systems in Indonesia are often developed in areas that are more suited to less intensive or alternative aquaculture systems.

 

The overall objective of the study is to develop more effective and informative site selection criteria and land capability assessment techniques to produce land classification schemes and maps for a variety of land-based aquaculture systems in Indonesia, and secondly, to identify environmental constraints and improve existing site selection criteria and land capability assessment and mapping criteria in Australia. The planned outputs target government officers, consultants and farmers. The Indonesian component involves training extension officers to more effectively use the planning tools.

 

The Indonesian component of the project is developing land capability assessment protocols using geospatial data and satellite imagery for regional-scale environmental assessment. This activity is based on detailed field investigations and validation of secondary sources of data. The project will also develop an overall coastal classification scheme in collaboration with ACIAR Project FIS/2003/027 to address the needs of both land and sea-based farmers. The project outputs will also include accompanying land capability maps for sustainable pond-based aquaculture and where required, combined land and water classifications schemes. The classification scheme will use mapping units that identify land suitability for a range of land and sea-based aquaculture systems and prescribe important farm management practices to address common environmental limitations. The Australian focus of the project is on the assessment of environmental and management risk factors for production and the integration of this knowledge into existing planning tools. Farm-level site selection criteria, utilizing low cost and simple technology, will be developed to enable Australian and Indonesian farmers to make better choices for pond/sea cage location, design and management, and also to select the most appropriate form of aquaculture.

 

 

 

In South East Asia fish cage farming is at least as productive as pond culture of shrimp, and is growing rapidly. Most nations in the region share concerns in maintaining appropriate environmental standards for this developing industry, but the environmental effects of fish cage culture are poorly understood in the tropics. The tropical environments of Indonesia and Northern Australia potentially used for cage culture are dissimilar to better-known northern hemisphere systems in a number of ways (e.g. biological turnover rates, tidal regimes, sediment types, water chemistry and rainfall regimes). Aquaculture target species in the tropics also differ greatly in biology from those grown in temperate northern hemisphere environments.

 

The overall project goal is to develop and apply planning tools to establish sustainable capacity thresholds for tropical finfish cage aquaculture. The project will collect, synthesize and model environmental information from coastal environments used for cage aquaculture in Indonesia and Australia and to use this to develop management tools to establish sustainable capacity thresholds. The results of our work on tropical fish cage culture in Indonesia will be linked to results from the parallel ACIAR project on pond-based aquaculture and will result in a classification scheme and appropriate management tools to facilitate the development of aquaculture in the coastal zone of South Sulawesi. The Australian study site, a 1000+ tonne barramundi farm at Bathurst Island, NT, will facilitate extension of planning tools to macrotidal environments. The resulting project outputs will facilitate the management of aquaculture industry development in a wide range of tropical environments in the Asia - Pacific.