Skipper optimistic as oyster season starts
Even after 13 seasons of working on oyster boats, skipper Peter Leask still feels a sense of excitement when March 1 rolls around.
Leask and his four crew on the Torea will be out dredging today, having left Bluff at roughly 4am.
Leask is optimistic about the upcoming season, though he said he will just have to get out there and see what happens.
Surveys of the oyster beds showed a lot of young spat was in Foveaux Strait and hopefully that would translate them pulling up a good amount of oysters, he said.
Three weeks into the season the skippers would get together to see how the season was faring, Leask said.
Leask believed that in four to five years they would start to see good numbers of oysters landed again, as the young spat came of age.
Last season, a total of 10 million Bluff oysters were taken from the fishery. The total allowable commercial catch for the fishery is 15 million oysters.
A Ministry for Primary Industries spokesman said no Bonamia ostreae has been detected in Foveaux Strait the latest round of testing results, completed in February.
The parasite, which is deadly to flat oysters, was discovered in farmed oysters in Big Glory Bay on May 24.
After the parasite was discovered, the ministry determined that the only available course of action was to pull all the farmed oysters in Big Glory Bay, in an attempt to prevent the spread of the parasite to the wild oyster fisheries in Foveaux Strait.
The next round of sampling is expected to begin in April for Southland. The ministry was continuing to work with the Stewart Island marine farmers to action all claims for compensation. ‘‘In many cases, partial payments can be made for losses incurred from the earlier phases of the response, whilst some of the more specific elements of claims will need to be evaluated for eligibility on a case-by-case basis.’’
The ministry has already paid Stewart Island oyster farmers more than $400,000 for their involvement and assistance with removal operations.
Additional payments to Southland farmers to date from the ministry include $290,000 for the purchase of mussel growing ropes, plus seed to help those affected farmers looking to change from oyster to mussel growing as quickly as possible.
The ministry also made an emergency compensation payment of $30,000 to help alleviate immediate hardship for a farmer.