New Zealand fish farm fights continues
Opinion
In its pursuit of nine new salmon farms in the Marlborough Sounds area, NZ King Salmon is facing the same litany of arguments heard in places like Canada, where the general population is totally ignorant about the real happenings around a salmon farm. The same goes for many of the participants of a public hearing taking place in Blenheim, New Zealand these days. One of the groups actively opposing the new farms is the Tasman and Sounds Recreational Fishers Association, whose president Martyn Barlow said to the Environmental Protection Authority board of inquiry hearing that “setting up new salmon farms in the Marlborough Sounds would have significant negative impacts on wild fish stocks, especially blue cod”. Commercial fish harvesters operating in salmon farming country in Canada knows that fishing for prawns is better near salmon farms, and wild salmon and halibut are routinely caught off salmon farm cages. Lobster fishing on Canada’s East Coast has never been better in areas where farms are located.
Even the Marlborough Girls' College's EnviroCouncil members are against New Zealand King Salmon's application, according to the Marlborough Express, “with Year 13 environmental prefect and EnviroCouncil member Ruby McIntosh said they had been reading, researching and building their knowledge for the submission since April”. According to the paper, “The salmon farms would have a detrimental effect on the local tourism industry and economy, Ruby said. She labelled the sustainability of the expansion as questionable, "educated guesswork".
But in British Columbia, tours of salmon farms have become a popular activity for visiting tourists, and in New Zealand, other Sound operators see fish farms as a boon, according to another article in the same paper by writer Penny Wardle;
Salmon has more to offer a tourism business than mussels, Marlborough Travel managing director Chris Godsiff told an Environmental Protection Authority hearing in Blenheim on Tuesday. Mr Godsiff told the board of inquiry hearing the New Zealand King Salmon application to build nine new salmon farms in the Marlborough Sounds that he planned to start salmon tours early this summer. "Visitors are very keen on interactive tourism such as feeding fish, especially when you can bundle it with a cooking demonstration or cooking school through to a seafood restaurant," Mr Godsiff said.
For eight months his company had worked with King Salmon on a proposed salmon-farming tour in Queen Charlotte Sound. Details were being finalised including moving a 50-seat launch from Pelorus Sound to Picton. Tourists would be taken to the existing Ruakaka farm near the Bay of Many Coves in Queen Charlotte Sound, Mr Godsiff said. He was keen to add state-of-the art new sites at Kaitapeha and Ruaomoko, with especially-built platforms for visitors.
Marlborough Travel grew out of his family's mussel-farming business, Mr Godsiff said. Visitors to the wharf had often asked about mussel farming and whether they could come out the next day. "The 4.30am start sorted most of them out," he said. He introduced a user-friendly departure time and soon had two departures a day for a three-hour cruise to a mussel farm.
Eco-tourism business operator Brian Plaisier, of Tui Nature Reserve in Pelorus Sound, asked Mr Godsiff why salmon tourism took so long to start when the first farm was permitted for visitors in 1983. Mr Godsiff said the industry was perhaps trying to get on its feet in those days and tourism was not part of its core business. Later on, it was able to add more benefits. The Plaisiers could enjoy the best of both worlds with their ecotourism business, Mr Godsiff said. "Instead of seeing the negative side of the salmon industry you could turn it into a positive."
