Design, build and implementation of a coral traceability system for the Queensland coral harvest fishery

The Queensland Coral Fishery is a quota-managed, hand-collection fishery that targets a range of hard and soft coral species. The majority of harvested coral (~80%) is sold for export to overseas markets as part of the ornamental aquarium trade.

Under current State legislative requirements, the Queensland Fishery logbook requires reporting of the type (species) and total weight of coral collected from particular locations during each harvesting trip. However, individual pieces of coral are unable to be traced back to where they were collected and the logbook quota under which they were reported.

Wild harvested coral may then undergo significant post-harvest transformation processes including: fragmenting of harvested specimens into smaller pieces which are then either sold or retained for growth and subsequent artificial propagation of asexual clones over multiple iterations. In the future there will also be the need to trace the sexually-produced progeny of wild-harvested parents over multiple generations.

Any proposed traceability system solution must be fit-for-purpose, tamper-proof, and must be able to distinguish between wild-harvested coral specimens and those produced on-land either via artificial propagation (cloning) of wild-harvested brood stock (mother colonies), or via sexual-reproduction (spawning). The system will include the ability to trace individual pieces of coral from wild harvest to export, but may apply different tracking methods to pieces sold direct from wild-harvest quotas from those subsequently derived via asexually propagation in land-based facilities.

The traceability system will be used by multiple actors along the live coral supply chain, meaning that software interfaces must be user-friendly and intuitive, and the system must be capable of achieving system interoperability between heterogeneous government agencies, including being able to harvest data from systems not owned by the Customer.