Fishing and aquaculture businesses are used to working with change. Seasonal variability, shifting ecosystems and fluctuating markets have always shaped when seafood can be caught or grown and what it is worth. But climate change is adding new pressures, from warming waters and marine heatwaves to extreme events and changing species distributions. 

For businesses that rely largely on catching, growing and selling seafood, these changes can also create financial uncertainty. One way of spreading that risk is to diversify how a business makes its income. 

Across Australia, some seafood businesses are doing this through seafood tourism. 

Seafood tourism connects visitors directly with the people, places and processes behind seafood production. It can be as simple as selling prawns from the boat or opening a farm gate, or involve guided tours, oyster tastings, cooking experiences and meals served metres from where the seafood was grown. 

Recent research by the Fisheries Research and Development Corporation (FRDC) found growing interest in seafood tourism as a diversification pathway for Australian fisheries and aquaculture businesses. Rather than only selling seafood, businesses can also create value from their knowledge, location and stories while building a more direct connection with consumers. 

One business taking this approach is Coorong Wild Seafood in Meningie, South Australia. 

Glen and Tracy Hill have operated their family fishing and seafood-processing business in the Coorong for more than 30 years. Alongside selling their catch, they now run Coorong Wildside Tours, offering visitors behind-the-scenes factory tours, seafood tastings and lunches, as well as boat trips on the Coorong with a commercial fisher. 

The tourism experiences draw on resources the business already has: decades of fishing knowledge, access to the Coorong, seafood-processing skills and the stories of the people and environment behind the product. 

FRDC describes the tourism operation as a diversification of the Hills’ fishing and processing business. Currently operating as a value-add, Coorong Wildside Tours has the potential to develop into a standalone part of the business. 

Diversification can become particularly valuable when conditions change. In 2026, following impacts from South Australia’s harmful algal bloom, Glen and Tracy were highlighted by the South Australian Government for identifying new income opportunities and using diversification to strengthen their business resilience. 

Similar approaches are emerging elsewhere in Australia. On Minjerribah (North Stradbroke Island), Queensland, Quandamooka Oyster Farm Tours has recently launched guided experiences across three working oyster farms. Visitors can walk the farms at low tide, learn how native Quandamooka Rock Oysters are grown and harvested, try oyster shucking, and learn about Sea Country, sustainable aquaculture and the history of the local oyster industry. The tours provide another example of how seafood businesses can create value from the knowledge, place and experience surrounding seafood production. 

Seafood tourism is at the centre of new research by the FRDC. The research team worked with 40 businesses across Australia and explored how they were incorporating tourism into their operations. They found that people don’t just want to eat seafood, they also want to experience where it comes from. The results of the project also identified grant opportunities, legislative requirements and decisions support tools which can be used by seafood business to help incorporate tourism into their business model. Whilst there is no one single model for how to do this, the project mapped out practical recommendations to help businesses understand what’s possible, and what fit their capabilities.  

Tourism does not remove the environmental risks facing seafood businesses, and developing new experiences can bring its own challenges, including costs, regulation and the need for different skills. But it offers another way to generate value from a seafood business that is not based solely on the amount of seafood caught or grown. 

This could be particularly important as environmental conditions become less predictable. For some businesses, adapting to climate change may not only mean changing what, where or how they harvest. 

It may also mean finding new ways to make a living from the knowledge, place and experience that surround the catch.