Coral Traceability System Solutions

**Buyer**:Department of Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water

**Key problem/s**

The Australian Government is investing resources to design and implement a coral traceability system for the Queensland Coral Harvest Fishery (QCF) to deliver greater transparency, bolstered social license to operate and sustainability assurance to domestic and international markets.

The QCF 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.

The Queensland Government, through the Department of Agriculture and Fisheries (QDAF), is responsible for managing the fishery. 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.

Weight of coral exported cannot simply be matched with weight of coral harvested due to significant post-harvest processing of specimens that is undertaken by the industry. These post-harvest transformation processes include: fragmenting of harvested specimens into smaller pieces, artificial propagation of asexual clones over multiple iterations, and in the future will include the need to trace the sexually-produced progeny of wild-harvested parents and their subsequent generations. All of these products need to be able to be traced back to their original wild-harvest parent stock to ensure that take is compliant, sustainable and to provide assurance to regulators and buyers.

The traceability system will trace individual pieces of coral from wild harvest to the buyer, including allowing for post-harvest processing of harvested specimens. To this end the buyer seeks detailed information on the capabilities of particular traceability solutions, specifically about products that can deliver an integrated hardware and software solution designed with the following considerations in mind:

- coral is a live animal that must be held in seawater.
- much of the coral specimen is covered in live tissue that is sensitive to damage and any identifier technology solution must not compromise the integrity of the product.

The traceability solution must not be cost prohibitive to industry, noting that individual pieces of coral can sell for anywhere between $3 - $3,000 AUD, with value depending on colour, aesthetics, species and rarity.

**The users and their needs**

The traceability system will be used by multiple actors along the live coral supply chain:

- regulatory agencies (Department for Climate Change, Energy, the Environment and Water; Fisheries Queensland; Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority; Australian Border Force, and Biosecurity Australia),
- industry (harvest fishers and their facility staff)
- buyers (coral retailers, wholesalers and distributors).

Software interfaces must therefore be user-friendly and intuitive for industry.

The system must be able to track and trace individual pieces of live coral through the supply chain from harvest to sale, allowing for users to be able to record transformation processes (e.g., propagation of clones from wild-harvest stock, generation of sexually-produced progeny, and mortality of individual specimens).

The system must have the following high-level functional needs:

- must be capable of managing for all the post-harvest transformational processes that live coral can undergo such that the traceability system can detect potential substitution of wild-harvest coral for product produced via asexual propagation within a facility post-harvest.
- must be capable of recording all transactions along the supply chain.
- must be capable of identifying distinct generations of asexually propagated clones or generations of sexually-produced progeny.
- any physical tracers attached to the product must have no impact on the health or viability of the live animal specimen.
- physical tracers and means of recording transactions must be tamper-proof (provide details of transaction validation rules)
- software solutions must include user and regulator multi-level security and privacy.
- must include innovative tag technology and cloud services, independent of os platform.
- must be capable of achieving system interoperability between heterogeneous government agencies.
- must be built around a database or ledger system that can be readily audited for determining compliance and
- ideally the system would represent a scalable solution which can be rolled out to other Australian jurisdictions and potentially globally to other coral-exporting CITES parties and can also potentially incorporate other CITES-listed animals.
- Ideally the system would include methods of recording inventory within industry or retail