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ACROSS THE DITCH SICKLY oysters BY JOHN MOSIG H ow's it going over there Kiwi, ready for the cold times? Us too. The only thing that keeps us going in the short days is the footy, eh? By the way, I hear the virus has got into around 80 percent of your oysters and the early warm weather triggered a mussel spawn, which in turn was crippled by an ensuing cold snap. We're having the same sorts of problems over here. The spawning season for jade perch was slow getting underway, and producing viable eggs this year was a nightmare. Heaps of orders went unfulfi lled and downstream production gaps are sure to follow. Two thoughts spring to mind. The fi rst one is that this is not only going to effect aquaculture. Food production in general is going to get a whole lot tougher, and the second is that it ain't gunna change any time soon. Anyone with any empathy for food production will have seen this coming for some time now. Sure the farmers are always complaining about the season, but the complaints are coming thicker and faster, and the impact is deeper and far more widespread than I can remember. There can be no argument. Surely the seasons are a-changin'. Well, not so much a-changin' as becoming more unstable. And that's the big worry. If nature moves the goal posts, that's fi ne. But if you align your run-up to compensate for the shift, only to fi nd they've been moved again at a whim, you're still going to miss the goal. Now, if we're battling in aquaculture, land-based farming must also be facing a similar situation, and while we'll all agree that man doesn't live by bread alone, without it he doesn't live at all. Pigs and poultry have been produced in climate-controlled sheds for ages now, and nutritional, veterinarian and genetic science has taken a lot of the guesswork out of their production. Growers in these sectors only face the risk of the price squeeze from shrinking market options and cost escalation from increasingly competitive global food ingredient markets and, certainly over on our side of the ditch, increasing power costs. And while it could be argued which of those two nemeses - the weather or the markets - is more insidious, there's no doubt which will give you a better deal over the long run. But that's not the real issue here. Buyer Tom and seller Jerry will always be at each other. With food production becoming a lottery, what are we going to eat while we wait for the next season to come around if we're stuck with the losing ticket? You've just experienced two examples of what the season can do to an industry spread along the coast of Aotearoa: one, taking oysters beyond their comfort zone and another, wiping out seedstock supplies. Average temperatures above or at the upper critical limit for imported coldwater species has seen devastation to the Atlantic salmon sector here in Tassie, and the Black Saturday bushfi res came close to wiping out the rainbow trout sector in Victoria. That's just a few examples, there'll be others, and there's more to come. Sure, like the pig and poultry folk, some of us can move our production indoors. The recirculation people would love that. They've been telling us for over two decades now that indoor fi sh farming is the future of the aquaculture industry. And while they have a point, nothing comes close to keeping costs to a minimum than mariculture. Filter-feeding shellfi sh are the foundation of more than the New Zealand aquaculture industry. Countries along the European Atlantic seaboard produce hundreds of thousands of tonnes of mussels, and it would be fair to say mussels and chips is the national dish of Belgium. Nothing beats the ever-restless sea for water exchange and a natural nutrient source. Maybe that's why the recirculation sector hasn't taken over the production of fi nfi sh yet, eh? But even those of us who can move our operations indoors and can condition our broodstock face the cost of a diminishing ingredient supply from the unprotected environment. We had a band over here a few years back called . Probably time to put them on the turntable again. This Is Serious Mum other thought, that we're not heading back to the good old days real soon, puts a perspective on things. You remember those good old days when one year in seven was a drought and another one in seven was a bumper season with the rest somewhere in between? Me too. They seem so far away now, don't they? The debate surely has gone beyond whether the current climate instability is anthropogenic or driven by cyclical forces beyond our control. If it is the former, we don't seem to have the political will or the scientifi c consensus on how to turn the situation around. If it's the latter, fasten your seat belt and adjust the chinstrap on your crash helmet. It's going to be a wild ride. High-priced abalone are grown in a climate-controlled environment using larvae from conditioned and genetically selected broodstock. Try making a bob from salmon or shellfish this way. 12 ■ NZ AQUACULTURE ■ MAY/JUNE 2012 Which raises the question, shouldn't we be investing more energy in how we're going to deal the impact of climate change and let nature take its course until the world comes to its senses? But hey, I'm just a fi sh farmer. What would I know?