Whitebait Season Best For Several Years

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31540, 30 November 1967, Page 14

Whitebait Season Best For Several Years

This year’s whitebait season was the best for three or four years, with nearly double last year’s quantity going through the market.

Last year P. Feron and Son, Ltd, marketed 57,4491 b of whitebait, and this year the quantity was 109,7731 b. The season ends at midnight tonight, but only small quantities are expected today and tomorrow.

Early floods made conditions good in West Coast rivers, but whitebait runs were not as big as expected. There was only one really good run and the large quantities caught then brought the retail price down to about 35c a quarter pound. At the start of the season the price was up to 60c a quarter pound. Only 321 b was offered at the market yesterday, fetching $1.34 a pound wholesale.

Although retailers . attributed the high prices to bulk buying by frozen food companies, wholesalers said this was not so. Freezing companies were not very ac-

tive this year because the price was too high for them. “There was a bit of local whitebait,” said one fishmonger, “but it petered out early in the season.” Another said there was no more than 1001 b of whitebait supplied this year from all the rivers this side of the Southern Alps. • “It’s dwindling away,” he said, “because there are so many out trying to catch them. If you go out on a Sunday you can’t get a pin between the jokers with nets.”

Marsden Adoption

An offer by girls of Marsden School, Wellington, to adopt a patient in Melanesia through the Lepers’ Trust Board has had a surprising result Arrangements have been made for the adoption of the beneficiary, a crippled youth, aged 20, from the New Hebrides named Marsden. The secretary of the Board (Mr D. Douglas) said that the girls had sent their first gift of $3O for the adoption.