Professor Mark Johnson:

Very briefly, on the harvesting of seaweed, obviously these questions are broadly about how businesses operate and the rights and obligations of people involved. We are based in the west where we are acutely aware of the issues and wish to see sustainable development. Being a natural resources group, that is one of our areas of interest. The Senator mentioned co-operatives. They seem to work in other contexts. There are examples in the literature of people harvesting goose barnacles in northern Spain. There are other inter-tidal resources where there might be something that could be learned but, perhaps, they have not faced the same challenges as outlined by the Senator of changes in the industry and potentially an industrial scale and part of the industry coming in. On the aquaculture front, there is a great deal of promise about and perhaps I will give Dr. Maeve Edwards an opportunity to say something on that issue.