Oyster Industry Warning

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31753, 9 August 1968, Page 1

Oyster Industry Warning

(N.Z. Press Association) INVERCARGILL, August 8. Southland’s oyster industry is in danger of being wiped out. This is the opinion of a leading man in the Southland fishing industry. He gives the oysters three years before they will be too sparse in Foveaux Strait to be economically harvested. He puts the blame on the 1962 Parliamentary Fishing Industry Committee, which decided to delicence the industry.

Oystermen this year reported a drop in the number of oysters harvested an hour on the 21 dredges working in the Foveaux beds. According to them, the only way to gauge the number of oysters in the beds is by the number of sacks of oysters dredged each hour by the boats. In 1966, it was 10.57 sacks an hour; in 1967 it was 9.32 sacks an hour. This year it is expected to be eight sacks an hour.

“The plain fact is that there are 21 boats working over about 3000 acres of oyster beds, each boat with two ojster dredges, for seven and a half months,” said the complainant. Farm Analogy

“It’s like a 3000-acre farm with 42 tractors harrowing it for seven and a half months. You can imagine all that is left.”

He said he would give the Southland oyster industry three more years.

“It’s bad for Southland. It is more than economics. Southland’s chief claim to fame has been oysters,” he said.

In his opinion it-was too late to save the oyster beds. They had already been fished

to a low point where regeneration would be difficult. His opinion was backed by two veteran oyster boat skippers with more than 60 years experience between them. Working Sandbanks Never before, they said today, had the oyster beds been so thoroughly dredged as this season. The main open beds had already been scoured, and the boats were now working sandbanks, which were almost impossible to work until the advent of echo sounding. The Seamen’s Union, which includes oystermen, is believed to be very concerned at the future of the men whose livelihood for the major part of the year comes from oyster dredging. There are even rumours of a boycott of any further dredgers given licences. There are other rumours in the industry that the Gov-

ernment intends to bring down regulations next year to increase the minimum size of oysters and reduce the season. Many within the oyster industry feel this will be too little and too late.