Top award for fish-farming research
Farmed snapper or trevally could be on the horizon, thanks to Nelsonbased research.
Nelson Plant and Food Research scientist Associate Professor Maren Wellenreuther has been researching ways to develop marine fish like snapper into farmable species.
Wellenreuther’s research aims to have native marine finfish species ‘‘aquaculture-ready’’ in the next five to 10 years.
‘‘At the moment in New Zealand, we only have three species that we can commercially breed in aquaculture: chinook [King] salmon, greenshell mussels and Pacific oysters,’’ she said. ‘‘We don’t have a native New Zealand fish species that is aquaculture-ready yet.
‘‘Overall, aquaculture is one of the fastest-growing primary production areas in New Zealand, and just having three species doesn’t make it very resilient. So our goal is to basically diversify what we can put in our farms.’’
Wellenreuther said farming fish was more complicated than simply taking wild fish and breeding them in captivity.
‘‘One of the issues we often encounter when we take a species from the wild and put them into a hatchery – they often don’t spawn.
‘‘Some species need cues out in nature, they need the change in day length, certain water, some change their diet, or they need a certain depth of water to perform courtship dances. Sometimes we don’t know that when we take fish into a hatchery.’’
Luckily, snapper took to captivity well and spawned from the first year, she said.
However, Wellenreuther and her team are working to improve the growth rate of the fish for commercial farming
‘‘Snapper matures after three years, and we’ve already been breeding for a number of years. We’ve just started to develop our third generation . . . we’re hoping with one or two, maybe three generations we’ll have really fastgrowing fish.’’
Wellenreuther has been using genetic mapping and tracking, finding genes that control specific traits, which can then be selectively bred for or against. She and her research team have also been breeding and growing fish under close monitoring to find out how best to raise them for aquaculture.
‘‘There’s no genetic manipulation or anything like that,’’ she said. ‘‘What we’re using the genetic tools for is to get a good understanding of the traits that we’re studying, to really select only the healthiest, best-performing fish to move on to the next generation.’’
Wellenreuther has also developed a photographic ‘‘fingerprint’’ method to identify individual fish, cutting out the costly and timeconsuming task of tagging each fish and measuring it.
Her work has been recognised by Royal Society Te Apa¯rangi in its annual New Zealand Research Honours, where Wellenreuther won the Hamilton Award for early career research excellence for her ‘‘solid, theoretical understanding of ecological and evolutionary genomics’’ and for demonstrating scientific leadership in her field.
She said she was ‘‘incredibly honoured’’ to receive the award. ‘‘This award is an acknowledgement of the importance of seafood to New Zealand, from both an export and a cultural perspective, and how science can be applied in new ways to support the food sector."
‘‘Just having three species doesn’t make [aquaculture] very resilient. So our goal is to basically diversify what we can put in our farms.’’ Associate Professor Maren Wellenreuther, Plant and Food Research scientist