Andrea joins RIEL and RINA as a PhD candidate, working on a project titled ‘Development of aquaculture techniques for Black Jewfish (Protonibea diacanthus), a new species to aquaculture in Australia’.
Andrea is an aquaculture scientist at the Darwin Aquaculture Centre and has been working in aquaculture for 19 years, after completing her Bachelor of Science (Aquaculture and Seafood Science) at Curtin University in 2005 and an aquaculture honours project on pearl oyster spawning with the University of the Sunshine Coast in 2011.
She is working on developing culture methods for black jewfish, a new species to aquaculture in Australia. It is an endemic, fast-growing and high-value fish with an established commercial market. Andrea hopes to develop farming methods to facilitate species diversification within the finfish aquaculture sector in the NT.
The PhD will cover fundamental aspects of developing hatchery techniques for early culture stages for this species, and is supervised by Prof Sunil Kadri along with Dr Keller Kopf, Dr Samantha Nowland and Dr Stewart Fielder.
Andrea will be based at the Darwin Aquaculture Centre on Channel Island, and at Yellow 1.1.26 at Casuarina Campus, on Larrakia Country.