Culture techniques of the Australian pearl industry

摘要

Pearling is our most valuable aquaculture industry with an annual farm-gate value of more than 250 million dollar. Methods of collection, animal husbandry, and seeding of large pearl oysters developed in Japan have been adapted to Australian pearl farming conditions since the mid-1950s. However, techniques for hatchery production of juveniles are relatively new, since the first Australian hatchery came online only in the early 1990s. This article overviews the developments that have occurred and looks to the prospects for the industry. The Australian pearling industry dominated by production from Western Australia, due mainly to the existence of a sustainable (quota-managed) wild fishery off the WA coastline, based around the Eighty Mile Beach area. The silver-lipped pearl oyster (Pinctada maxima) is the main culture species. The present allocation for the 16 WA licensed companies is around 600,000 wild shell and there is a hatchery-derived shell seeding quota of 350,000.