You will need an aquaculture lease if you intend to carry out aquaculture operations within public water lands in New South Wales.
Aquaculture means cultivating fish or marine vegetation for the purposes of harvesting with a view to sale, or keeping fish or marine vegetation in a confined area for a commercial purpose.
There are four classes of lease are available, depending on the sector and area in which you intend to carry out operations.
Estuarine (oyster) sector:
- Class 1: where extensive aquaculture is undertaken and most of the lease is less than 6 metres deep or where the lease includes a bed from which oysters are dredged
Marine waters sector:
- Class 2: where extensive aquaculture is undertaken and most of the lease is more than 6 metres deep and the area does not include a bed that can be used for dredging
- Class 3: where intensive aquaculture is undertaken (nutritional feeding)
- Class 4: where fish ranching is undertaken (the artificial stocking of an area with juvenile stock of a species such as abalone that can roam freely and feed naturally).
