Second bid to farm salmon

Press, 17 July 1979, Page 1

Second bid to farm salmon

A second salmonfarming venture has been proposed for Canterbury.

A new Christchurch company has applied to the North Canterbury Catchment Board for water rights on the upper Hurunui River, for the farming of salmon on the ocean ranching principle.

The Hurunui Salmon Company has applied to divert up to 36,700 cubic metres of water a day from the Sisters Stream into raceways, in which salmon fry would be reared before release to the sea.

A principal of the company, Mr D. B. Martin, said last evening that the proposal was similar to a salmon farm proposed for the Rakaia River. Mr Martin said that the new venture was still in its early stages, and his company would meet the North Canterbury Acclimatisation Society next Wednesday “to put the plans on paper before them.”

As well as water rights, the company will need a licence from the Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries (Mr Maclntyre) and an allocation of salmon fry from the South Island Salmon Company.

Under the ocean ranching principle, fry are reared in raceways before release to the sea. When the mature fish return to spawn after about three years, they can be harvested from where they were reared. Mr Martin said that the scheme’s success depended on many intangibles, including the quality and volume of fish which could be harvested. However, the quality and flow of the Sisters Stream was good. The company would use about 2ha of land on the Longfellow Station, beside the stream, to build raceways. It was too early to say when the scheme could begin, he said. The Rakaia scheme is now in the final stages of approval. Mr A. W. Crowe, owner of the South Pacific Salmon Company, said last evening that he now had a lease on 4.5 ha of land below the Lake Coleridge power house. The land, owned by the Electricity Division, would be used to build concrete raceways, into which 43,200 cubic metres of tail-race water from the power house would be diverted each day.

Mr Crowe was granted water rights in May. He. has still to gain approval from the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries for the design of the raceways, and get a licence from Mr Maclntyre.