MOLLUSC MAGIC
Oyster farming in George Brown Bay, New Zealand
From the front window of the de Havilland Canada DHC-2 Beaver propeller plane where I was seated, the view took in the ever-sprouting waterfront of New Zealand’s capital — the skinny Sky Tower, lofty hotel and office buildings, a sprawling container terminal and the humped Auckland Harbour Bridge. And yet, on this clear morning, the expansive, breathtaking vista wasn’t the highlight of the day. I was, in fact, en-route to something more thrilling, to the cool waters north of the city for the ultimate, fres has-can-be sea-to-table experience.
Our aircraft was part of Auckland Seaplanes’ (aucklandseaplanes.com) small fleet, operating from the city’s central Britomart district. As we climbed above Auckland it became clear how uneven New Zealand’s capital and environs are. “There are 53 volcanoes in the Auckland area,” our pilot Paul Dalley said over the internal headphone system, “this was a volcanic saltwater plain, the only city in the world like this.” We passed over a body of water shaped like a heart, Lake Pupuke, formed by union of two volcanic craters. Dalley banked to the right and we circled the cone of an extinct volcano.
SPECTACULAR VIEW
From the height we were flying, between 500 and 1000 feet above sea level, we were afforded an intimacy of scale unusual for a flight, and could see the windows of houses, the outlines of cars, the ripples on the water below, the shadows of sheep in meadows or people on the beach, the sensual contours of islands shaped like silent green creatures. We passed over Kawau island, one of the largest isles in the Hauraki Gulf, today popular as a weekend getaway and notable for a grand mansion that used to be a governor’s house.
The scenery unspooled as a series of jaw-dropping small islands, compact housing developments, undulating suburbs, beachside batches (the name for seaside homes in New Zealand), and indented coastlines with clear water. Suddenly we spotted a small barge moored in a channel between headlands and Paul flew past, looped round and landed in the water before chugging forward alongside. A lean man with a big smile, large sunglasses, sinewy arms, and short cropped hair pulled the aircraft toward the barge and tied it up. We carefully stepped off the plane and onto the boat.
The barge captain introduced himself as Phil (full name Phil Morris) and his vessel was called the Shuckle Ferry (oysterfarmtours.co.nz). It was a sweet, simple boat, white with pastel-blue trim, a small barbecue area at one end, a large table in the middle, and some cushioned bench seating on the outer edges. What made it unique is that it is the country’s only oyster farm boat tour, less than one year old and, as our flight illustrated, effortlessly accessible from central Auckland.
OYSTER FARMING
Morris untied the plane and soon Dalley departed. From Scotts Landing in the Mahurangi Harbour, where we arrived, Morris shifted the barge to George Brown Bay, named for the bay’s first settler. Here we could see rows of wooden racks in the water, structures that looked like the worn pilings of an old pier. These were the oyster farms and Morris owned six acres of them, a huge adjustment from his previous job working on big yachts around the world. “I came back to New Zealand and wanted to keep working on the water,” he said, and stumbled across an advert in a newspaper selling an oyster farm.
His entry into this new venture was a baptism by fire, but soon he come to know that three types of oysters grow in New Zealand’s waters — Bluff, rock and Pacific. Rock oysters take four years to grow and aren’t allowed to be farmed in the country. They are also notoriously laborious to harvest, done by rolling the rocks where they grow on the shore. Bluff oysters only grow in the country’s extreme south. Pacific oysters first came to New Zealand in the