Seafood Cooperative Research Centre Visiting Experts

Visit by Professor Michael Crawford

Visit by Dr Pierre Boudry and Dr Helen McCombie

Visit by Prof Mike Dillon and Prof Professor Daniel Kahn

Visit by Professor Clemens von Schacky

Visit by Dr Doug Tocher

Visit by Dr Clive Talbot

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First Visiting Seafood Cooperative Research Centre Research Expert - Professor Michael Crawford

Seafood Services Australia (SSA) ‘Seafood for Life’ Global Network organised for Professor Michael Crawford, Director of The Institute of Brain Chemistry & Human Nutrition at London Metropolitan University, to spend the week in Australia beginning the 4th February 2008 to promote the benefits of eating seafood.

Professor Crawford is one of the world’s most influential researchers and writers on nutrition and related subjects. Michael has urged greater consumption of seafood to reverse the growth of mental health problems in developed nations, saying, for example, that the rise in brain disorders and mental health problems associated with a deficiency in Omega 3 (fish) oils is “the most pressing health issue of the 21st century -- forget obesity, mental health is the real disaster already beginning to happen”. (Mental health has overtaken heart disease as the leading medical health problem in Europe, estimated in 2004 to cost 386 billion Euros a year).

The Australian Seafood Cooperative Research Centre, along with SSA and a number of other Cooperative Research Centre Participants developed an action-packed program for Michael which included him:

• Attending an industry meeting at the Primary Industry and Resources of South Australia and speaking with a number of CRC "industry heavy weights"
  
  
• Being our dinner speaker at the inaugural Visiting Fellow Dinner. The dinner was a sell-out!
  
  
• Being the keynote speaker at a sold-out seminar entitled “Seafood for a healthy body and mind”. This was sponsored by the Australian Seafood CRC, Nutritional Physiology Research Centre, the University of South Australia and the Nutrition Society of Australia, Adelaide Group. The seminar was followed by a networking session over a light lunch, kindly provided by Flinders University and the University of Adelaide with Australian seafood generously provided by the South Australian Research and Development Institute.
  
  > Click here to download the seminar program
  and speaker biographies.
  
  

• Meeting with a number of recent graduates at the University of South Australia
  
  
• Being our guest of honour at the Sydney Fish Market for an early morning tour of the market (to mark the beginning of Lent)
  
  
• Being our guest of honour (along with guests from the seafood industry, government and media) at a breakfast served by the Sydney Seafood Cooking School, followed by Michael speaking about “Why we need to eat seafood".
  
  
• Being a keynote speaker at Sydney University for the Nutritional Society of Australia (Sydney group), and International Life Sciences Australasia at a seminar entitled "Seafood for a healthy body and mind" (the Omega-3 Centre provided drinks and nibbles)
  
  
• Being our guest of honour for a walk along a Gold Coast beach with the SSA Seafood for Life team, followed by a dinner for invited guests
  
  
• Being a guest speaker at Simplot Australia's Retail Conference talking to approximately 250 retail experts following the launch of a new seafood product.

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Professor Michael Crawford

Ted Loveday and Roy Palmer meet with Michael Crawford

Second Visiting Seafood Cooperative Research Centre Research Experts - Dr Pierre Boudry and Dr Helen McCombie

World leaders in oyster genetics Dr Pierre Boudry and Dr Helen McCombie from IFREMER, France visited the Seafood Cooperative Research Centre in august 2008 to impart their oyster genetics knowledge.

Industry selective breeding program, hatchery representatives and research and development providers gleaned and exchanged information on selective breeding and heritability of
traits such as mortality in a two week exchange.

Given Australian Seafood Industry's heavy emphasis on selecting for survival, General Manager Matt Cunningham valued the opportunity to learn from French experience on the
link between mortality, condition and stress events. Using this information Australian Seafood Industries will be striving to identify mortality triggers in South Australia and Tasmania (heat, handling etc.) with the aim of selecting for traits
that will reduce Pacific Oyster mortality.

Shellfish Culture’s Breeding Manager Scott Parkinson gathered information across mussel production, tetraploidy
and disease resistance.

Dr Boudry’s international perspective confirmed that Australian selective breeding achievements have been very significant when he visited Tasmanian industry’s Hayden Dyke lease
which held lines displaying excellent uniformity, shape and condition.

In seeing these achievements Dr Boudry reconfirmed the importance for Australia to follow in international footsteps in its reliance on hatchery production so that it can reap the benefits of sound selective breeding programs.

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Third Visiting Seafood Cooperative Research Centre Research Experts - Professor Mike Dillon and Professor Daniel Kahn

During August 2008, the Seafood Cooperative Research Centre was visited by Professor Mike Dillon and Professor Daniel Kahn from the Grimsby Institute in United Kingdom as part of our aim to build international collaborations to expand contacts and capacity in seafood processing, packaging and product development.

From the visit, an in-principal agreement has been reached with the Grimsby Institute to take Australian seafood processing staff for training and to bring Grimsby staff to Australia to conduct workshops on aspects of seafood processing.

If you don’t know about the Grimsby Institute of Further and Higher Education, it’s a fantastic college offering full and part-time courses, training for business, education in the community as well as the commercial arena. One of their real course strengths is in the area of seafood. Their Masters in Seafood Processing and Productivity is of particular interest to the Seafood CRC and is run partially in the town of Tromsø, Norway. Grimsby being Europe’s food town and a past centre for fisheries, the Grimsby Institute offers its students exciting learning experiences and of course experiences we want our Seafood CRC participants to share.

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Fourth Visiting Seafood Cooperative Research Centre Research Expert - Professor Clemens von Schacky

In February 2009, the Seafood Cooperative Research Centre was invited to join the University of South Australia (UniSA) and others in bringing Professor Clemens von Schacky from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität (LMU) Munich to Australia.

Professor Schacky is a specialist relating to heart disease issues and has been working on a blood test, called the Omega-3 Index, with Professor Bill Harris, an American specialist.

Professor Schacky gave talks in Perth (in conjunction with Cooperative Research Centre participant Curtin University), Adelaide and Sydney. Feedback from Professor Clemens’ visit from all three locations was very positive.

In Sydney Professor Schacky was involved in the well orchestrated workshop run by The Omega-3 Centre where he combined his presentations with that of Dr Phil Calder from the United Kingdom.

Clemens believes that the typical western population is far more susceptible to coronary heart diseases than say the Japanese population simply because of traditional diets. His presentation highlighted that the average western population has an Omega-3 Index of slightly above 4 whereas the average with Japanese people is just over 10. Essentially this transfers to a tripling of sudden cardiac deaths in western populations over the Japanese. He said that Japanese people had been tested in many countries of the world to confirm whether the issue was to do with genes or diet and the results clearly highlight the latter to be the reason.

Cooperative Research Centre participant Seafood Services Australia, organised to interview both Professor Schacky and Dr Calder and the fascinating evidence has been recorded on video and will shortly be available at www.seafood.net.au/health.

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Professor Clemens von Schacky from Ludwig-Maximilians Universität in Munich

Fifth Visiting Seafood Cooperative Research Centre Research Expert - Dr Clive Talbot

From the 15th May 2009, the Seafood CRC was fortunate to host a visit by Dr Clive Talbot who conducted a range of activities in conjunction with Clean Seas Tuna's operations.

Some of the activities Clive was involved in included reviewing Yellowtail Kingfish farming activities with particular focus on feed management issues. Some of the things he helped with included identification of opportunities and constraints related to infrastructure, the operating environment and human resources, an evaluation of Yellowtail Kingfish diets currently used and recommendations for diet development research, analysis of historical growth and performance production data of Yellowtail Kingfish, production of a growth model incorporating size, temperature and seasonal effects and recommendations for implementation of regular and periodic data gathering including template data formats.

Dr Talbot alos conducted an appraisal of facilities available for diet development work and recommendations for potential funding models for a research farm. He also presented to key staff of generic best feed management practices using some examples from Yellowtail Kingfish culture in Japan and Europe.

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Fifth Visiting Seafood Cooperative Research Centre Research Expert - Dr Doug Tocher

Dr Doug Tocher, an internationally recognised guru in finish lipid and fatty acid nutrition from the Institute of Aquaculture at the University of Stirling in Scotland visited Port Lincoln and Adelaide during the week of the 5th October 2009 to share information and ideas with CRC industry participants and scientists.

On Tuesday morning October 6, Dr Tocher met with Mike Thomson (Clean Seas Tuna) and heard the latest on closing the Southern Bluefin Tuna (SBT) lifecycle as well as observing grading of Yellowtail Kingfish (YTK) in sea cages in Boston Bay. In the afternoon, he met with Dr Trent D’Antignana and heard about Trent’s work injecting Sardines with various feed additives using meat marination technology.

On Wednesday October 7, Dr Tocher visited the SARDI Aquatic Sciences Pool Farm hosted by Dr David Stone in the morning and Professor Bob Gibson’s lipid laboratory at the Waite Campus of the University of Adelaide in the afternoon.

On Thursday October 8, Dr Kathy Schuller organized a mini-symposium on lipid nutrition at Flinders University in honour of Dr Tocher’s visit. The symposium was attended by approximately 25 people. The symposium was followed by a workshop to discuss possible future collaborative research projects in the area of finfish lipid nutrition.

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Dr Doug Tocher meets with CRC research scientists to discuss collaborative nutrition research projects

Doug with CRC Participants