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Murray
Cod up to the Gills & Stoked
Marissa
Bailey
Project Officer
Department of Primary Industries, Victoria
My
day in science
Being the week leading up to Good Friday, we had been inundated
with orders of Murray Cod for local restaurants/takeaway
shops/deli's and butchers and to be exported to Singapore.
Murray Cod had been carefully selected (making
sure they had no marks or genetic defects) on Monday morning
to fulfil the orders. These fish are placed in separate holding
cages to the other fish and taken off their food in order
to 'purge' all the food out of their bellies to be processed.
On Wednesday morning, I arrived at the particular trial site
containing the 'purging' fish with one of my colleagues. I
removed the 6 styrofoam boxes half full of ice from the back
of the vehicle that I was travelling in, lay a protective
mat down in the back, and set up a set of scales. I put on
my wet weather gear and headed down the walkway
to the purging cages with a landing net.
My colleague was down there already half filling buckets with
water. I carefully netted all the fish from the purging cages
into the buckets of water using the landing net until the
purging cages were empty. Carrying all the buckets up to the
car, the fish were individually weighed
(their weights recorded for invoicing and to keep track of
the biomasses of fish left in each of our fish cages) and
placed into the styrofoam boxes now containing an ice slurry
(ice + water).
The fish go to sleep soon
after immersing in the ice slurry. Most of the fish are delivered
to their destination whole; however, some are then transported
to a local processor where they are bled to be exported to
Singapore.
I returned to the office and caught up on some office work
while I waited for the fish to be processed.
I called the local freight forwarder to book the 2 styrofoam
boxes in to be forwarded to our freight forwarder
in Melbourne. When the fish were ready, I repacked them into
new styrofoam boxes with gel packs to be transported to Melbourne.
Dropped them at the transport depot and headed back to the
office. Cleaned up the area that I had been working in and
finished up for the day.
My Job
I am a project officer working on Our Rural Landscape Subproject
1.3 "Multiple Water-Use: Adding Value and Sustainability
to Water in Agricultural Landscapes". The project focuses
on multiple water-use concepts that represent
major opportunities to create valuable new products without
increasing the volume of water consumed.
My project focuses on using irrigation water
for aquaculture. At present, we are growing
Murray Cod in irrigation dams in the Sunraysia. The Murray
Cod have been in the Sunraysia now for 19 months, (arriving
as 50-100g fingerlings), and they are now at a marketable
size (between 1kg - 2kg).
We have began small scale marketing trials to get the product
into the local and export markets to make people aware of
this fantastic product. We will make a costing
model that farmers with large scale irrigation dams can use
to show them the value in multiple water
use of their dams, e.g., practising aquaculture in their dams.
I studied Aquatic Science at Deakin University
in Warrnambool and am stoked to have found
a job within my field of study. The project has so far been
really successful, and it looks like there will be commercial
uptake of our project in the near future.
Growing Up
Growing up in a small farming town in the Victorian Mallee,
my family was always taken by my parents on coastal
holidays. From Year 10 onwards, I wanted to be a
Marine Biologist. In year 10, I completed one week's work
experience in the aquaculture production facility
at Deakin University in Warrnambool. In year 11, I completed
one week's work experience at the Marine and Freshwater Research
Institute at Queenscliff.
For year 11, I selected subjects based on
the prerequisites for Aquatic Science at
Deakin University in Warrnambool and continued these subjects
in Year 12. I started my degree in Aquatic
Science the following year.
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