More questions for the Head of Biosecurity Alex Schapp

Lindsay Tuffin

• With the detection of only one wild abalone out of 83 abalone from the southern D’Entrecasteaux appearing to test positive for abalone ganglioneuritis virus, what is its significance?

• Was this ‘positive’ test result in a wild abalone a definite strong positive for the presence of AGV DNA or a borderline, weak positive – possibly a false-positive result?

• This test result was a healthy abalone with no evidence of the ganglioneuritis infection. Maybe there’s a need for more samples from this site.

• The source of the postive AGV infections is still the processor at Mornington – Tas Live Abalone; it is the link to infected abalone in Tasmania. The question is where did the AGV infection come from?

(Hopefully the forensic experts are checking the company’s transactions of live abalone in the period prior to the outbreak. Tasmanian abalone fishers can keep wild caught abalone in seawater tanks for several days and they can harvest fish from various locations around Tasmania and in Bass Strait; fish can be mixed in together and can be transferred from tank to tank and even between boats. )

• If the Tasmanian wild abalone sampling are showing that there is no endemic AGV infection in our coastal waters, how did infected abalone end up in a live abalone processing plant in southern Tasmania?