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| 21 March, 2010 |
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| Should other nations follow Alaska's lead in using aquaculture as part of a fishery enhancement programme? |
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Outbreak of virus on Australian abalone farms 18 July, 2006 - THERE has been an outbreak of a lethal virus in abalone stock on fish farms in the Australian state of Victoria. The disease causes paralysis and death and state authorities have closed four abalone farms and made off-limits a 10-kilometre stretch of coastline to divers, after the ganglioneuritis virus was found in wild and farmed stock. On the nearby island state of Tasmania, a spokesman for that state’s aquaculture industry, Colin Dyke, said there was no sign of the virus in Tasmania, but the industry could not afford to be complacent. He said in parts of Asia the virus had been devastating. Citing his own experience of the disease on a visit to China in the 1990s, he said he had visited one premises afflicted by the disease back in the mid-90s which was the largest producer of aquaculture abalone in China - that operation no longer existed. In respect to the Victorian outbreak, the Tasmanian Primary Industries Minister, Mr David Llewellyn, reported that the Tasmanian Government was ready to help out Victorian fish farmers if needed. Mr Llewellyn said there was no sign of the disease in Tasmania, but his Department was receiving regular updates from Victoria. The Tasmanian chief veterinary officer, Dr Rod Andrewartha, said scientists interstate were developing a test for the virus, to help better identify it: "It's a new disease or newly-emerging disease - it doesn't mean that the virus hasn't been there for a long time, but it's just been discovered recently," he said. "We can be fairly confident that it's a fairly new disease because only recently they have completed a survey of wild abalone around the southern Australian coastline and it wasn't detected during that survey." www.fishfarmer-magazine.com is published by Special Publications. Special Publications also publishes FISHupdate.com, FISHupdate magazine, Fish Farmer, the Fish Industry Yearbook, the Scottish Seafood Processors Federation Diary, the Fish Farmer Handbook and a range of wallplanners.
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