Hatchery built on 3 decades of salmon farming
Phil Rose working at New Zealand King Salmon’s Takaka Hatchery. Photo: Gerard Hindmarsh.
Now well into its 30th year of operation, the New Zealand King Salmon hatchery in the Waikoropupu Valley has the distinction of being the oldest salmon farm in New Zealand, granted licence No. 1 by the Ministry of Fisheries back in November 1978.
Since it began, a total of two trillion litres of water has passed through the farm, 75 million eggs have been spawned and 30 million smolts (juvenile salmon) either reared or transferred to sea cages in the Marlborough Sounds. The company now has the distinction of being the largest single producer of Chinook salmon in the world, with an output of around 7000 tonnes per year. The Takaka hatchery employs nine permanent staff and another six temporary staff during the April-June busy time.
The manager since 2001 has been Jon Bailey, who 10 years earlier left his infantry officer job in the British Army to take up fish farming, first at a trout farm at Uxbridge (west of London) then later at a salmon farm up in Scotland. With editor-wife Susi and their two children, the family emigrated when Jon scored the management job at Takaka after being flown out for the interview.
“Fish farming is basically like any animal husbandry,” says Jon. “You have to make sure that your stock’s environment is clean. You have to keep them well fed, and look after their welfare. We’re lucky here at the Pupu because the water we use is so pure. For the last 15 years we’ve even been exercising a selective breeding programme. This means we know the pedigree of every one of our brood stock thanks to a ‘pit tag’ inserted into every brood fish that can then be scanned. This prevents any undesirable practices occurring - like inbreeding - that could weaken our stock.”
The big black brood fish, nearly a metre long and 10kg in weight, make quite a sight as they flash around the ponds. Just prior to spawning at three years old, they are humanely dispatched and cut open to extract the eggs, around 6000 per fish.
The salmon farm’s water right, granted after a lengthy series of hearings before a special tribunal, allows it to divert four cubic metres per second from Waikoropupu Springs, roughly a third of their output. This is gravity fed through some 55 concrete-lined ponds on the 9ha property before being returned to the Springs River after fish food and faeces are removed by sludging.
The present site was first identified as having potential as early as 1974 when Clive Barker first pumped water into some Para pools there for his experimental salmon farming. The original concept for the (then-named) “Bubbling Springs Salmon Co” was for “ocean ranching”, where the smolts are released into the river to swim out to sea where they would grow best, and then be recaptured as adult fish two or three years later when they returned as mature adults to spawn.
More than half a million smolts were released under this scheme, but only a handful of fish ever returned, in one year as few as 15 fish coming back. So in 1987, Southern Ocean Salmon emerged as the new venture and salmon were reared to harvest size in ponds. Many Golden Bay people remember that period when they were able to go up to the salmon farm to buy virtually any-sized fish they wanted. This all changed in 1996 when Southern Ocean Seafoods merged with Regal Salmon to form NZ King Salmon.
Because the new company produced 5,000 tonnes of salmon a year alone from its expanding marine farms in Pelorus Sound, not to mention needing an increasing number of smolt, it was logical to convert the Waikoropupu farm (which only produced 350 tonnes per annum) into a sole-purpose hatchery, producing purely eggs and smolt. This is now done in conjunction with the Regal Hatchery in Canterbury, where Jon’s job description as freshwater manager also applies.
While the biomass on the company’s Waikoropupu site is now only around half of what it used to be during the flesh-rearing era, it enables the company to raise fish at very low densities, which not only provides premium quality eggs and smolts but also support strategies for year-round harvest.
Chinook salmon were introduced from California in the late 19th century as game fish, and are now prized for their colour, texture, taste and Omega 3 content.
Says Jon: “Thirty years ago Clive Barker had the pioneering vision to establish this country’s first salmon farm, so it’s his legacy that’s the reason we are here now. But I have to say we have come a long way since those early days. Today we combine new technology with improved husbandry and better feed quality to secure a much better result.”
Gerard Hindmarsh
