TROUT SALVAGE EQUIPMENT

Press, Volume XCVIII, Issue 28975, 17 August 1959, Page 13

TROUT SALVAGE EQUIPMENT

Venturi Unit Found Successful

The North Canterbury Acclimatisation Society believed it had solved the problem of salvaging brown trout from the Selwyn river, said the chairman of the society fish committee (Mr R. C. Blackmore) yesterday. At a demonstration at Greenpark yesterday, 18 members of the society’s council inspected a salvage unit in which about 500 fingerlings and trout of up to 31b were transferred to a pond —with full success. Previously there were heavy losses when trout were transferred from the Selwyn river. Based on a Californian invention, the new venturi unit was built by members of the society’s staff. It consists of a 100-gallon tank mounted on a utility vehicle. A pump with a 3500-gallon an hour capacity circulates the water through a chamber which charges it with the necessary gases to keep fish alive. Mr Blackmore said the unit was probably the only one of its kind in the Southern Hemisphere. It was certainly the first time such a unit had been used in New Zealand.

Yesterday’s demonstration was a complete success, according to Mr Blackmore. Trout caught by an electrical stunning device were placed in a tank at the rate of Qrree pounds a gallon. Forty-eight hours later they were fully recovered and “perfectly happy.” The unit could keep trout alive for about five hours. After the demonstration, the vice-president (Mr P. G. Ellis• congratulated Mr Blackmore and members of the staff who built the unit. He said the unit could possibly be the forerunner of a larger and more adequate unit.