Imported products now provide more than sixty per cent of seafood sold in Australia, according to a new CSIRO seafood handbook.

"We've gone from basic British cod and haddock consumers in the 1950s to today importing more than two hundred species from fifty countries," says Gordon Yearsley, a co-author of a new book, the Australian Seafood Handbook - an identification guide to imported species.

"Consumption of imported seafood has reached 140,000 tonnes a year or fifty per cent more than levels of ten years ago, with an industry value today of about a billion dollars.

"Together with the tremendous variety of more than eight hundred species commercially harvested or farmed in our own waters that shows a very healthy appetite for seafood," says Mr Yearsley.

Funded by the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC) and supported by the fishing industry, the handbook is being launched in Sydney today (Tuesday).

The guide is a companion volume to the Australian Seafood Handbook - an identification guide to domestic species (CSIRO, 1999).

The guide profiles a hundred and thirty species or species groups and is an important educational facility for the seafood processing and food service trade. Edited by Mr Yearsley and Dr Peter Last and Dr Bob Ward, from CSIRO Marine Research, the guide is intended to assist importers, buyers and processors in identifying imported species.

Additional features of the guide are genetic protein fingerprinting to distinguish species and standardisation of marketing names to minimise confusion in the market.

Mr Yearsley says half the quantities of imported seafood come from just two countries - New Zealand and Thailand. With efficient international chilled and frozen freight capacities, and diversified markets, the number of seafood imports has expanded enormously. For example the quantity of chilled fish imported has grown thirty per cent in just four years.

Mr Noel Gallagher, Chairman of Seafood Traders of Australasia Ltd and a half-century veteran of global marketing of seafoods, says that the industry provides Australians with a plentiful supply of seafood year round.

"Used in tandem with the updated Australian Fish Names List, importers now have a powerful, world-class reference tool for seafood species identification which will trigger reforms in the seafood industry primarily benefiting consumers," Mr Gallagher says.

Mr Harry Peters, Chairman of the Seafood Importers Association of Australasia Limited, says seafood imports have provided a unique balance which kept seafood on every household menu and generated a considerable rise in per capita consumption.

"Importers of seafoods have operated in harmony with the domestic fishing industry to level out supply with demand. This provides Australians with a variety of products from all over the world at prices affordable to the average consumer," Mr Peters says.

The Australian Seafood Handbook - an identification guide to imported species is available from CSIRO Publishing (1 800 645 051 and on the web: www.publish.csiro.au) and book stores, and sells for $49.95 (240 pages, hardback).

More information from:

Mr Gordon Yearsley mobile: 0417 743 437

Ms Kylie Paulsen, FRDC, mobile: 0438-630-491

Craig Macaulay, CSIRO, mobile: 0419-966-465, ph: 03-62325219