Oceans and Fisheries Minister Shane Jones at the Aquaculture NZ conference in Nelson. Photo: RNZ / Samantha Gee
Bespoke legislation and more ocean space is needed for the farming of kai moana, says the fisheries minister, so that aquaculture can one day rival New Zealand's beef sector.
Shane Jones opened the industry's annual conference in Nelson today, and spoke of the need to create a new global-scale protein-based industry.
"We have an inordinate opportunity for our tamariki and grandchildren to convert the oceanic space into a platform for global-scale protein-based fish farming."
Regulatory reform and increased capital investment were also needed to help the sector reach the government's target of $3 billion in exports in the next decade.
Aquaculture products are projected to bring in $650 million in export revenue for the year to June, up 13 percent on last year.
Jones announced the government's five year Aquaculture Development Plan, in March, which set out the steps to grow the industry to generate $3b a year and double the number of jobs.
He said Ministry for Primary Industry staff were working on further plans for growth in the sector, and change needed to be driven by central government.
"I just don't think it's tolerable that anything to do with fisheries that we surrender the authority to local government or regional government.
"As a nationalist-orientated politician, I don't see another way of cracking this nut unless we take back a lot of the authority."
Jones said aquaculture was a "risk-riddled industry" that was constantly confronting problems, ones it could solve with government support and without increased regulation.
Science communicator and content creator James Sibley, who is often called a "fishfluencer" due to his social media work, was in New Zealand to speak at the conference and said there were incredible opportunities for aquaculture growth in New Zealand.
"I got into aquaculture because of the potential it has to feed the world, to feed a growing population with potentially healthier proteins than a lot of the population eats today, without doing irreversible damage at the scales that we see with current farming practices around the world, is immense but it has to be stewarded correctly."
The Blue Endeavour farm NZ King Salmon wants to build in the ocean Photo: NZ King Salmon
He said New Zealand was at the forefront of change with NZ King Salmon's open ocean salmon farm in the Cook Strait.
"What they are trying here with the Blue Endeavour project, going offshore with these much larger pens much higher current waters, cleaner waters, highly oxygenated it has really strong potential."
But Sibley said it came with its own challenges.
"It's a much more hostile environment out there, they need bigger boats, more people. It has the potential to be great for the economy and coastal communities there that work those farms, but how they can maintain that, and if this trial works, then what? Do we put out another one? Do we try something new? Where do we go from there?"
It has been a tough year for the country's biggest salmon producer who posted half year net loss of $20.8 million.
NZ King Salmon chief executive Carl Carrington said its fish went through the equivalent of having the flu or a bad cold last summer and went off their feed, forcing the company to reduce harvest volumes for an extended period, which affected earnings.
"It's not unusual [for fish] to go off feed over the summer period but what happened this time, it was for an extended period of time and it didn't recover until much later than what we'd usually expect and as a result, we lost a lot of biomass growth."
Carrington said despite that, the company had $60m in the bank and a balance sheet that was getting stronger and they were "increasingly confident" about the future.
"We're increasingly confident because we know what we've got in the toolkit to deal with these challenges over summer... and we think the growth pathway in front of us is now just starting to look really positive."
General manager of aquaculture Grant Lovell said changes to its farming model in recent years meant unlike in previous summers, there was not mass mortality, the fish had just stopped growing.
It had done feed trials and other mitigation work to improve feed consumption and growth rates in the past few years.
The company was also making good progress on Blue Endeavour - which it hoped would prove up the model for open ocean aquaculture in order to see major change in export growth.
Lovell said the two pens for the open ocean farm were assembled and launched in Shakespeare Bay in April, and then were towed without nets or fish to Waihinau Bay in the outer Marlborough Sounds.
Juvenile salmon, smolt, were then transferred to adjacent holding pens and would be transferred out to the Blue Endeavour site in November.
The mooring grid was currently being installed, seven kilometres north of Cape Lambert. It was due to have been complete by now but contractors had encountered issues with weather and sea conditions, but were back on track.
Lovell said the new farm's service vessel Whekenui, which was built in Vietnam, was due to arrive in Port Nelson next week.
The company had also purchased a $8m site at the Cloudy Bay Business Park in Blenheim, with plans to eventually move processing operations there to support the company's growth, while maintaining the factory in Nelson to produce smoked fish and ready to eat products.
A quayside feed storage warehouse was also under construction in partnership with Port Marlborough, enabling feed to arrive directly into Picton, eliminating the need for it to be trucked over the hill from Nelson.
Lovell said "public enemy number one" was the lack of room for aquaculture to grow.
"In a sea of opportunity, in what feels like oceans of space, finding a home is actually quite hard. We obviously have Blue Endeavour now, but this alone will not grow the industry to the levels required."
He said long term regulatory improvements were required to ensure growth and expansion in the industry.
"Although we are incredibly grateful for the marine extension bill, all freshwater farmers did not get that same benefit for freshwater salmon farms, all those consents will still expire in the coming years and we need to create the business confidence and certainty for investment."
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