Review the emergency plan for low oxygen and heat before summer

What is going on

Last February a low dissolved oxygen event during a heatwave cost the farm stock in three cages because aeration equipment reached the worst cages late and readings were taken too infrequently to see the trend. This week cage 3 dipped below the action level at depth and cage 12 is under a disease investigation. The Aquaculture Emergency Procedures Plan is due for its pre-summer review, and the General Manager wants the low oxygen and heat section rewritten with clear triggers, roles, equipment locations and a communication tree, informed by the February incident log, this month's readings and the environmental policy. She also wants a desktop exercise designed to test the section with the farm crews before the end of November.

Your brief

Review the February incident and current data, identify the gaps in the existing plan section, rewrite the low oxygen and heat response with triggers, roles, equipment and communication, align it with the water quality procedure and environmental obligations, and design a desktop exercise with an evaluation method.

Work through it

You do not need to do it all. Doing a few of these will show you what the work is like. Your ticks and notes stay on this device.

• Read the Aquaculture Emergency Procedures Plan, the Water Quality Monitoring Procedure and the Environmental Management and Protected Species Policy, and list the current triggers, actions and reporting obligations.
• Review the February low oxygen incident log and this month's readings for cages 3 and 12 in the Farm Stock and Water Quality Log, and identify what was seen too late and what worked.
• Consult the leading hands and the Hatchery Manager on equipment locations, boat availability, crew numbers on weekends and the practical limits on hourly readings across twenty-four cages.
• Draft the revised low oxygen and heat section: trigger levels, reading frequency by risk level, feeding and handling rules, aeration deployment priority by cage, roles and the incident controller, and the communication tree including the General Manager, veterinarian and regulator.
• Add an equipment schedule listing every aerator, oxygen unit, meter and boat with its location, owner and pre-summer check date, and record the checks as planned actions in the WHS Incident and Hazard Register.
• Check the revised section against the environmental policy for feed waste, mortality disposal and any regulator reporting, and against the fatigue limits in the safety policy for extended responses.
• Design a desktop exercise for the farm crews with a scenario, injects, decision points, expected actions and an evaluation checklist, and schedule it in the calendar before the end of November.
• Prepare a change summary for the General Manager with the version update, the training needed and the date the revised plan takes effect.

What someone in this role would produce

• A gap analysis of the February event and current data
• The revised low oxygen and heat section of the plan with a communication tree
• An equipment schedule with pre-summer checks
• A desktop exercise package with evaluation checklist
• A change summary for the General Manager