King Salmon boss baffled by furore

The country’s largest salmon-farming company says potential taxpayer funding to explore uses for its waste products is small fry compared with the environmental outcomes being floated.

In a draft submission to the Ministry for the Environment, New Zealand King Salmon (NZKS) is asking for $116,000 from the Waste Minimisation Fund to help it figure out how to deal with thousands of tonnes of dead fish and fish faeces.

The company will put in about $175,000 of its own money.

In the document, NZKS identified that 1000 tonnes of ‘‘mortalities’’ – fish that have died in captivity or during transfer – go to Blenheim’s Bluegums landfill each year.

It also stated that 2000 tonnes of fish faeces, which it was working to have removed from the seabed floor of the Marlborough Sounds, would also have to go to landfill.

However, NZKS chief executive Grant Rosewarne said the company was now looking for more sustainable options to address the waste issue in terms of environmental impact, cost and use of resources.

‘‘Burying fish that die sounds bad to people and the fish do turn into compost by themselves, but it would be the better environmental outcome if we turned it into compost, put it in a bag and sold it to people for their garden, so that’s what we’re trying to do,’’ he said.

The submission had identified warm water temperatures in the Sounds as the main reason for the fish deaths.

King salmon prefer temperatures between 12 and 17 degrees Celsius, but the farms have been warmer than usual since early December, and one farm has been consistently over 19C at a depth of 5 metres.

While NZKS would not abandon its sites in the top of the south, Rosewarne said there was ‘‘definitely a chance’’ of moving to cooler water spaces further south to alternate between summer and winter operations.

‘‘The fish run a different biological model to land animals – they run a very high-fertility, low-survival model where about 3 per cent would survive in the wild. In the farming situation we’ve got that up to 80 [per cent] to 90 per cent, but unfortunately not every salmon makes it and it’s worse in a warm year than in a cooler year.

‘‘We’re a 365-day sort of company, but [if] we can harvest out of here in the cooler months and out of the south in the cooler months – that would be a very good outcome for us.’’

NZKS said it wanted to research and run trials composting the waste.

It estimated the total cost of the trial would be close to $300,000.

Rosewarne said he was ‘‘mystified’’ as to why his company’s application was being singled out for scrutiny.

‘‘It’s a $20 million farm for which we’ve applied for $116,000. There’s a bit of an issue here that no matter what King Salmon does, there are elements out there that just see it in a negative light and ... King Salmon is the one they turn the spotlight onto,’’ he said.

‘‘We are applying for funds which are exactly there for this purpose. It would be a good use of the fund’s money because instead of something . . . being wasted, it would be used by other sections of society, like gardeners.’’