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Skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers · code 6221

Aquaculture workers

Aquaculture workers breed and raise fish and cultivate mussels, oysters and other forms of aquatic life, for sale or delivery on a regular basis to wholesale buyers, marketing organizations or at markets. Tasks include - (a) breeding, raising and cultivating fish, mussels, oysters and other forms of aquatic life as cash crops or for release into freshwater or saltwater; (b) collecting and recording growth, production and environmental data; (c) conducting and supervising stock examinations in order to identify diseases or parasites; (d) monitoring environments to ensure maintenance of optimum conditions for aquatic life; (e) directing and monitoring trapping and spawning of fish, egg incubation and fry rearing, applying knowledge of management and fish culturing techniques; (f) cleaning, freezing, icing or salting catch on- or offshore, and preparing fish and other products for shipment; (g) maintaining buildings, tanks, machinery, boats and other equipment; (h) delivering or marketing products; (i) renting or investing in buildings, equipment and machinery, and purchasing food and other supplies; (j) supervising and training aquaculture and fish hatchery support workers. Examples of the occupations classified here: - Algae cultivator - Fish farmer - Oyster farmer - Pearl cultivator - Seafood farmer - Skilled fish farm worker - Skilled seafood farm worker Some related occupations classified elsewhere: - Aquaculture production manager - 1312 - Aquaculture labourer - 9216

None of this job's tasks scored high enough to count. It ranks 175 of 427 for holding up against AI.

Also known as

  • aquaculture hatchery worker
  • aquaculture hatchery manager
  • aquaculture hatchery technician
  • aquaculture rearing technician
  • aquaculture recirculation technician
  • aquaculture husbandry worker
  • aquaculture mooring manager
  • aquaculture cage technician
  • aquaculture husbandry technician
  • aquaculture harvesting technician
  • water-based aquaculture technician

Job titles from the EU's ESCO list. Search for any of them on the jobs page and you'll end up here.

77.5
Holds up
against AI Not Exposed

AI could take on 22.5 of 100, on average
so it holds up at 100 − 22.5 = 77.5

That's the whole sum, and you can check it against the ILO's study.

60.9
How hands-on
out of 100

From O*NET, averaged across 2 US jobs

37.5
How fiddly
and cramped

finger skill 41 · hand skill 39.3 · cramped spaces 32.2 · averaged

Kind of hands-on work · hands-on 50+ · fiddly under 39.4 Hands-on, less fiddly work

Less fine handwork and fewer cramped spaces than a typical hands-on job. That clears one hurdle for machines. It doesn't mean machines are doing this work yet.

estimated O*NET 31.0 BLS occupational crosswalk chain ISCO-08 to 2010 SOC (Aug 2012, rev. Jun 2015); 2010 to 2018 SOC (Nov 2017); O*NET-SOC 2019 taxonomy data 0.7-work-setting measures chosen by Frey & Osborne (2017) · the grouping is a sorting, not a measurement

This number is probably too high

This score only looks at AI tools like chatbots. It doesn't look at robots at all — and this job rates 60.9 out of 100 for how hands-on it is, which is exactly where robots come in.

Have a look at the tasks below and judge for yourself. The ILO scored them low because a chatbot can't do them. Whether a machine with hands could is a different question, and we can't answer it yet.

The tasks behind the score

The score is the average of these. A job is really a bundle of tasks, and an average can hide how uneven that bundle is.

The task AI could do most of scores 56.3, while the average is 22.5. A big gap means some of this job is wide open to AI and some of it barely at all. That's quite different from a job where everything sits somewhere in the middle, even when the averages match.

  1. 56.3

    Delivering or marketing products

    Medium
  2. 43.5

    Collecting and recording growth, production and environmental data

    Low
  3. 28

    Supervising and training aquaculture and fish hatchery support workers.

    Low
  4. 17

    Conducting and supervising stock examinations in order to identify diseases or parasites

    Very Low
  5. 15

    Monitoring environments to ensure maintenance of optimum conditions for aquatic life

    Very Low
  6. 13.5

    Breeding, raising and cultivating fish, mussels, oysters and other forms of aquatic life as cash crops or for release into freshwater or saltwater

    Very Low
  7. 13.5

    Directing and monitoring trapping and spawning of fish, egg incubation and fry rearing, applying knowledge of management and fish culturing techniques

    Very Low
  8. 13.5

    Renting or investing in buildings, equipment and machinery, and purchasing food and other supplies

    Very Low
  9. 12.5

    Cleaning, freezing, icing or salting catch on- or offshore, and preparing fish and other products for shipment

    Very Low
  10. 12

    Maintaining buildings, tanks, machinery, boats and other equipment

    Very Low

10 tasks · the High to Very Low labels are the ILO's

from the source Working Paper 140, Generative AI and Jobs 2025 index data 0.7-work-setting

Helped, or replaced?

The score above can't tell a tool that makes you faster from one that does the task instead of you. Jobs and Skills Australia looked at those two things separately, and this is their result, matched to this job.

1 Australian jobs match this one, and we've simply averaged them. Treat the numbers as a rough guide.

AI helps you
66
AI does it for you
41

Helping wins by 25 points.

estimated Our Gen AI Transition (Gen AI Capacity Study) September 2025 detailed data release data 0.7-work-setting matched to Australian jobs 1211, 3631

Compared with similar jobs

There are 18 jobs in the “Skilled agricultural, forestry and fishery workers” group, averaging 84. This one is below that.