ACROSS THE DITCH
How we're going IN 2011
BY JOHN MOSIG G
'day Kiwi. How's it going over there in the Land of the Long White Cloud? The sun's still rising on the right hand side? Same here. Nothing seems to change,
eh? Our erstwhile editor was asking the other day how aquaculture was looking over here. From what I'm reading about things on your side, I'd say pretty much the same. To start with, governments – and remember, the West Island is so big we have to have several governments to cover the whole shebang – don't seem to be able to grasp that aquaculture is farming. It's a food-producing, wealth-creating,
risk-taking
enterprise that employs lots of people and feeds a whole lot more, and is subject to the vagaries of the season and the marketplace. They still, with exceptions I'll get onto in a minute, insist
on leaving the regulation and management of our industry to people, as well-meaning as they may be, who are trained in resource management, operating out of fi sheries departments with a deeply rooted regulatory culture. In some cases – and there are faults on both sides here – this manifests itself as a "them and us" ethos. To be quite honest, if the Australian wool industry pioneers
John and Elizabeth McArthur had been saddled with the fi sheries bureaucracy we have to deal with today, never mind riding on the sheep's back, we'd be shearing kangaroos and eating rack of wombat for our Sunday roast over here. The irony, or if you like the proof of the pudding, is
Tasmania, where over 30 years ago someone in Hobart slammed a palm down on a parliamentary desk and said, "We're going to have an aquaculture industry, come what may," and asked what had to be done to clear the way to make it happen. The answer was to have an Aquaculture Act to regulate
how it would be managed, from environmental concerns to food safety issues and everything in between. The underlying theme was designed to enable the establishment of an aquaculture industry in Van Diemens Land.
Note the price on the imported green lip mussels versus the fresh local blue mussels
And that, kiddies, is why Tasmanian salmon and oyster aquaculture are among the best in Australia and the Atlantic salmon output is ranked fourth in the world in volume and second-to-none in quality. So much for Tassy. They went through their rationalisation phase over that time and I won't say it passed without some tears. But Skretting has added an extra production line to double its output and I understand some of that crosses the Tasman to push along your Chinooks. Aquaculturally, the rest of the Wide Brown Land is a bit of
a mixed bag. From its early days in the late 1970s and early 1980s it grew dramatically each year and it was the next big thing. Then it fl attened out. Why? There were several reasons. Firstly, some of the projects were poorly thought through.
Investors – in some cases this is using the term charitably – were market-driven and species were chosen for their high value rather than their economic farmability. In most cases the high value was because of the chosen
Fresh rainbow trout, thanks to sophisticated production and processing, represents some of the best value on ice at capital city seafood outlets.
12 ■ NZ AQUACULTURE ■ JANUARY/FEBRUARY 2012
Fresh, farmed produce sells alongside imported fish
