The oyster farm binding together kaupapa Māori and science
When Simon and Wini Geddes bought a 56-year-old oyster farm in the Bay of Plenty, they wanted to create a platform for Māori in the aquaculture industry.
In June last year, the couple bought the four-hectare farm in Ohope, near Whakatāne, and renamed it Tio Ōhiwa.
Wini said Tio Ōhiwa was now one of the first 100% Māori-owned oyster farms in the world and what made it successful was the manaakitanga and whanaungatanga practised on site. “It’s the people in it and the support from our kaumātua ... and our iwi and our hāpu,” she said.
The farm was established in 1968 and when the Geddes bought it last year, they transformed it into a whānau-owned business. Wini said they can not share how much they bought it for but it was a “well-negotiated deal”.
Simon said it was hard to find a bank that would back them, so they turned to their own community – among others, the local marae and their whānau invested in the farm.
Since then, the workers on the farm have been collecting about 2000 oysters a day, Wini said, and most of them would then be sent to caterers and restaurants across the country.
The processing centre was next to the farm, she said, which made it easier to preserve the freshness of the oyster.
A small quantity of the oysters would be sold at the roadside shop, which was a popular fish and chips shop with locals, Wini said.
“It’s like an oversized food truck with no wheels.”
The hard shells of the oyster were recycled, Simon said.
Some shells would be crushed to pieces and given to free-range poultry farmers who would feed them to the chickens, and some would be sent whole to landscapers, he said.
“There is a big potential for oyster shells to be recycled.”
Wini said they were working hard to establish Tio Ōhiwa oysters as competitors of the more traditional Pacific oysters and Bluff oysters.
“It’s definitely a different taste and you can notice it in the texture, in the milkiness of it.”
The aim in the future was to develop through research a particular type of rock oyster that was resistant to diseases as well, Wini said.
The farm works closely with the Ministry for Primary Industries to manage water quality and with the Cawthron Institute in Nelson to check on the oysters’ wellbeing. “They basically test the quality of our oysters. We send five to 10 oysters. Put them on urgent courier so they get to Cawthron in Nelson within 24 hours,” Simon said.
“And from there they test the flesh of those oysters.”
The couple’s daughter and son work for the farm too, with Olivia being a marketing executive and Ngamotu the farm manager.
Simon said the business also received some funding to employ cadets and seven cadets were now working and training on the farm.
He said the environment posed the biggest challenge for the Tio Ōhiwa farm, as workers spent most of the day out in the water collecting oysters and then went back to the processing centre on-shore where they cleaned the oysters.
“You can’t control the weather,” he said.
Tio Ōhiwa also operated a cruise boat in the harbour.