Bluff oysters in short supply as rough seas dock boats
Wild Bluff oysters have been in short supply for fans of the delicacy this season, with rough weather often preventing boats from getting into Foveaux Strait to dredge them up.
The Bluff oyster season started two months ago, and has four months left.
Barnes Wild Bluff Oysters manager Graeme Wright, who had been involved with the industry for more than 20 years, said he couldn’t recall a start to the season that was so badly disrupted by weather.
There was a 12-day stretch in late April when just one of Barnes’ six boats got out to dredge for oysters, and that was only for a couple of hours, he said.
Foveaux Strait, between Bluff and Stewart Island, was a “wild piece of water” and the boat crews had to treat it with respect. “The weather has been a major factor. When you compare it to the last couple of seasons, we have got a lot less oysters out of the water.”
Wright said clients, including restaurants in the North Island, were not getting the number of oysters they normally would.
“People just want oysters and we want to sell them oysters. There’s a lot of demand but we haven’t been able to supply them because of the weather.”
It was also hard on the factory staff and the boat crews wanting to get to work, he said. The quality of the wild oysters so far this season was “not primo”, but certainly an improvement on the past two seasons, he said. The industry quota was 7.5 million oysters out of the strait for the season, with Wright confident it would be met as long as the weather allowed the boats to get out.
Meanwhile, Bluff Oyster and Food Festival committee member Kylie Fowler said just several hundred tickets out of 4000 were still available for the festival on May 25.
The festival would take place for the first time in three years but, first, the longvacant Club Hotel, adjacent to the oyster festival site in Bluff, was being demolished.
Ryal Bush Demolition contracting and demolition manager Quinton Winsloe said the building would be down and the site cleared ahead of the festival. The former hotel was previously deemed a dangerous building, preventing the 2023 festival from taking place, and the 2022 oyster festival was canned due to the Covid-19 pandemic.