Science Centres: Fisheries

For this issue of Fisheries & Aquaculture Update we asked Graeme Coates, Executive Director of the New Zealand Marine Farming Association, for an ‘industry comment’.

Graeme Coates
Executive Director, NZMFA

My library of Aquaculture Update, now Fisheries & Aquaculture Update, stretches back to issue No. 7 in 1993, which included in its pages articles on algal blooms, spat shortages in the mussel industry, paua research, and snapper enhancement. I treasure my carefully filed copies of the magazine. However, given this opportunity to reflect on their content, I wonder whether we have progressed the aspirations of all those authors who have published Update articles over the past decade.

Recalling some of the earlier Update articles turned my thoughts to the 1980s, when I had the difficult task of marketing the outcomes of a government sponsored R & D programme in the United Kingdom. In that programme, the UK Department of Trade and Industry supported private sector research on a dollar for dollar basis.

The research undertaken at our laboratory/farm in Scotland was fantastic biological stuff: broodstock management, hatchery technologies for a range of marine finfish, mass production of algae, rotifers, and Artemia, breeding programmes for Tilapia, feeding requirements for eels and flatfish, and understanding basic water quality requirements.

The concerns of investors in Europe at the time were much the same as those of investors in New Zealand today

• how could farmers get approval to undertake a new activity using novel technology?
• where did one find trained staff?
• were sufficient domesticated broodstock and seed stock available?
• where would the feed and feed technology come from?
• was there sufficient knowledge of fish pathology and were fish health support services available?
• did the workplace environment provide confidence for venture capitalists and bankers?

In many ways, the biological side of aquaculture research is the least complex part of the mix (though at times it may be frustrating and disappointing), whereas the commercialisation of the research endeavours can be extremely difficult.

I continue to marvel at how, with apparent ease, the Europeans have grown their sea bream (snapper) industry from virtually nothing in 1980 to about 150 000 t in 2002. Even more surprising is that most of this growth has taken place in the Mediterranean Sea, an area famed for sea transport, marine archaeology, and tourism.

A conference held by the Fisheries Research Division of MAF in 1982, ‘Prospects for snapper farming and reseeding in New Zealand’, pointed the way forward. So why hasn’t snapper farming grown in New Zealand? The lack of progress can be attributed to the numerous hurdles that deter investors from capitalising on the achievements of those providers, and not to any deficiency in the abilities of the country’s research providers or scientists.

Today, aquaculture in New Zealand is dominated by three species: salmon, for which the farming technology is well developed globally, and two species of shellfish, greenshell mussels and Pacific oysters. The farming of these two shellfish is relatively simple: because the seed stock are largely captured from the wild, there are limited pathological issues, no external feed sources are required, and between the two of them they can be farmed around the entire coastline of New Zealand.

For this country to benefit most from the research tools that are available to industry, we need to remove the hurdles that continue to confront marine farmers in New Zealand, as they used to confront the early European sea bream investors. Which brings us yet again to the stalled aquaculture law reforms.

A joint Ministerial press release in November 2001 stated that the aim of the reforms was ‘to enable the development of aquaculture around New Zealand by simplifying the application process, whilst at the same time protecting the rights of other fishers and the marine environment’.

The aquaculture law reforms are the key to on-going research excellence and to increasing the demand for aquaculture research in New Zealand. With a simplified application process, a secure and enduring property rights regime, and a willingness by all to ‘move on’, our research providers will be able to deliver on things biological.

Without the introduction of an enabling legislative reform programme, aquaculture and aquaculture research in New Zealand will continue to lag behind that of our contemporaries, and competitors, in Europe and the rest of the world. Industry and research providers need to work together to ensure the reforms are indeed enabling.

Graeme Coates
Executive Director, NZMFA