Emergency Marine Pest Plan

Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry, 2025

Response manuals

Four marine pest response manuals provide guidance on responding to specific priority marine pests or taxonomic groups. In addition, the marine pest response manual provides information on managing emergency responses to marine pests where a specific marine pest manual does not exist.

The manuals provide management and technical information required to manage emergency responses, including:

• guidance and rationale for incursion response
• marine pest assessment
• pathways and vectors of introduction and spread
• surveillance and delimitation
• containment, control and eradication
• decontamination, destruction and disposal.

These manuals may be used when:

• planning for response to marine pest biosecurity incidents
• responding to a suspected or confirmed marine pest incursion.

Each manual is adapted from AUSVETPLAN and AQUAVETPLAN.

Biosecurity incident management system: marine pest version (BMS: MPV)

This guide gives general advice on how to manage responses and recovery during biosecurity incidents in Australia, with special focus on marine pest issues.

It provides guidance on:

• starting a biosecurity incident response and deciding its scope
• steps needed to manage a biosecurity incident
• reviewing a completed response
• roles and communication lines between control centres, consultative committees, and national or state management groups
• responsibilities within an incident management team
• standard terms used in incident management
• special considerations for responding to marine pest issues.

The guide can assist with:

• planning a response to marine pest biosecurity incidents
• running staff training and development activities
• designing response exercises
• responding to actual marine pest biosecurity incidents
• evaluating any of the activities listed above.