Seafood Industry Contributions Study

The Fisheries Research & Development Corporation (FRDC) has funded a national project that will help industry to “tell the story” of its economic contributions to, and its place within, the national, state and regional economies and communities  through a series of regional/sector-specific case studies.

Headed by the FRDC Human Dimensions Research (HDR) sub-program, the project will also develop a robust and nationally-consistent framework to support data collection and estimation of economic contributions in the future.

Phase 1 of this project is underway and will produce estimates of the economic contributions (including gross value added and employment) of commercial wildcatch fisheries and aquaculture to the national, State/Territory economies.

Phase 2 of the study will provide examples and measures of the broader range of social and economic contributions made by specific, selected fisheries/aquaculture sectors at the regional or product scale. This will happen through a series of case studies, in addition to recent studies in NSW and Victoria.

FRDC is interested to hear from industry about potential case studies.

A Steering Committee and supporting Technical Advisory Group have been established to oversee the project and;

  • identify and review existing economic contributions studies;
  • identify and review data needs, data availability ad gaps;
  • establish a network of key data contacts in jurisdictions; and,
  • establish methodological design and scope of the economic contributions estimation phase

Project Communications:

The final products will be a technical report and user-friendly summaries, which will be developed with the FRDC Communications team.

Project outputs will be staged to allow project partners to inform and engage both industry stakeholders and other key audiences.

Please contact the FRDC Human Dimensions Research (HDR) sub-program leaders: