Dr Mark Crane is Officer in Charge of the AAHL Fish Diseases Laboratory.

Dr Mark Crane: supporting Australia's aquaculture industries

Dr Mark Crane is Officer in Charge, Research Team Leader and Research Project Leader at the Fish Diseases Laboratory within CSIRO's Australian Animal Health Laboratory (AAHL).

• 24 January 2011 | Updated 14 October 2011

Overview

• Current activities
• Background
• Academic qualifications
• Achievements

Current activities

The AAHL Fish Diseases Laboratory provides diagnostic services, research and development to support and protect Australia’s growing aquaculture industry and our natural aquatic resources.

Led by Dr Crane, the Laboratory specialises in research and diagnosis of diseases of aquatic animals, including finfish, molluscs and crustaceans with an emphasis on exotic (foreign) and emerging diseases.

Dr Crane's current projects include:

• characterisation of emerging disease agents (for example, abalone herpes-like virus)
• development and characterisation of new finfish cell lines (for example, pilchard, southern bluefin tuna)
• development and establishment of diagnostic procedures for:
  • exotic viruses of finfish (in particular,  nervous necrosis virus, koi herpesvirus, infectious salmon anaemia virus, and infectious pancreatic necrosis virus)
  • diseases of molluscs (in particular, Bonamia spp., Perkinsus spp., and abalone viral ganglioneuritis)
  • diseases of crustaceans (in particular, viral diseases of farmed shrimp such as white spot disease).

    Dr Crane led a research team that won the 2010 Victoria DPI Science Award for research on the newly emerging abalone herpesvirus.

Background

Dr Crane joined CSIRO in 1991 and has been Officer in Charge of the AAHL Fish Diseases Laboratory since 1993.

Prior to this, Dr Crane held positions as:

• Research Fellow in the Department of Biochemical Parasitology at Merck Sharp & Dohme Research Laboratories in Rahway, New Jersey, USA
• Visiting Fellow at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, USA.

Academic qualifications

Dr Crane graduated with a Bachelor of Science with First Class Honours from the Department of Zoology at the University of Southampton, UK, in 1974.

He earned a Doctor of Philosophy through the Division of Immunology and Experimental Biology at the National Institute for Medical Research in London, UK, in 1977.

Achievements

Dr Crane led a collaborative research team, consisting of scientists from Victoria Department of Primary Industries (DPI) and AAHL, which won the 2010 Victoria DPI Science Award for research on the newly emerging abalone herpesvirus.

The AAHL Fish Diseases Laboratory, under Dr Crane's leadership, has been the primary laboratory in Australia involved in the detection, identification and preliminary characterisation of a number of newly emerging pathogens of aquatic animals in Australia (Aeromonas salmonicida, Tasmanian aquabirnavirus, Tasmanian Rickettsia-like organism, pilchard herpesvirus, Australian bass nodavirus in finfish, IHHNV in prawns, Bonamia sp., Perkinsus olseni, abalone herpes-like virus in molluscs).

This work has culminated in publications of interest both nationally and internationally.

During his years of research, Dr Crane has published more than 50 papers  in internationally recognised journals, including Nature and Science.

Over the past decade Dr Crane has served on several aquatic animal health advisory committees and is currently:

• Leader of the Aquatic Animal Health Subprogram in the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC)
• member of the Animal Health Committee’s Sub-Committee on Aquatic Animal Health within the Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry 
• Subject Editor for 'Fish diseases due to viruses' in Diseases of Aquatic Organisms
• Review Editor for Aquaculture.

Learn more about the AAHL Fish Diseases Laboratory.