Orange roughy: working together to assess fish stocks
Orange roughy: the Irish connection
NIWA oysters are winners
Lobsters launched
Good news for hake fishery
Kingfish go commercial
Paua training
NIWA has detected record numbers of young hake on the Chatham Rise in its annual multi-species fish abundance survey. It’s the first time the survey has seen two-year-old hake since 1994, and the numbers suggest there may be more juvenile hake on the Chatham Rise now than in any year since the surveys began in 1992, says Dr Mary Livingston of NIWA.
The survey is funded by the Ministry of Fisheries from industry levies, and covers all QMS species, as well as other species such as rattails and javelinfish.
Unloading kingfish from NIWA’s live fish transportation tanker into the clients farm at Parengarenga and (above right) juvenile kingfish being loaded for delivery.
Tens of thousands of kingfish fingerlings have been delivered by NIWA to the largest land-based kingfish farm in the world. Further batches of kingfish will be produced by NIWA’s Bream Bay Aquaculture Park for the new farm. Peter Ferens, Business Manager for Parengarenga Incorporation, which built the new farm in Northland, says they are very pleased with the high quality of the fish and how they are performing.
TOKM’s Shane Jones and Robin Hapi with Minister of Maori Affairs Parekura Horomia enjoying lobster at the launch.
New technology for commercial-scale marine farming of lobsters in New Zealand has been developed by a partnership between researchers, industry, Maori, and NIWA. The technology allows for the sustainable capture of seed lobsters from the wild and growing them to market size in specially designed cages at sea. The lobsters are fed on fresh farmed mussels.
Rarely seen: this 5 cm long orange roughy, picked up by the survey, is one to two years old.
New Zealand expertise in orange roughy is being sought as far afield as Ireland.
The Irish government’s Marine Institute has contracted NIWA to provide training in ageing orange roughy and acoustic survey techniques to some of its own fisheries researchers and industry representatives. An Irish scientist was on-board Tangaroa to be trained in deepwater survey techniques during the latest orange roughy survey.
NIWA-reared oysters have won top honours from the New Zealand oyster farming industry. The best stick of oysters at the annual industry awards came from a joint project between NIWA and a group of leading oyster farmers wishing to settle hatchery reared oysters on to grow out sticks. Parua Bay Oysters on-grew the oysters that were settled in the hatchery at the Bream Bay Aquaculture Park and entered the sticks into the awards. The success of the research has encouraged NIWA to attempt to scale up the new seed production technology together with industry partners.
An intensive, two-day course on paua farming will be run at NIWA’s Mahanga Bay Aquaculture Facility on 5-6 October. The course covers not only paua husbandry, but the fundamentals of designing and running seawater systems including hands-on training in measuring water quality.
Participants can use the course to gain credit towards four unit standards in the National Certificate in Seafood. A subsidy from the Seafood Industry Training Organisation (SITO) is available for people working in the industry.
Also coming up:
Introduction to Marine Aquaculture.
NIWA and the Orange Roughy Management Company (ORMC) have completed an extensive survey of orange roughy stocks on the eastern Chatham Rise.
Rarely seen: this 5 cm long orange roughy, picked up by the survey, is one to two years old.
The survey required close coordination between the ORMC vessel, San Waitaki, and two NIWA-operated vessels, NIWA’s deepsea research vessel, Tangaroa, and a commercial vessel chartered from Endurance Fishing, Tasman Viking. San Waitaki conducted an acoustic survey of part of the Spawning Box on the northeast Chatham Rise.
