Trout farming ‘risk to environment’

Press, 5 January 1980, Page 16

Trout farming ‘risk to environment’

Trout fishing was a major participant sport and was not up for grabs by a few “quick quid exploiters,” said Mr T. Orman, research director of the Federation of Freshwater Anglers. He said the credibility of the Ministry of Fisheries was in doubt because of its continual support for trout farming, as much overseas evidence told of its economic uncertainty and its environmental dangers.

Mr Orman was commenting on the views of a Ministry officer, Mr M. J. Batey,- who had said that there was little to fear from introducing trout farming in New Zealand.

“The statement by Mr Batey is so absurd that in it he admits that overseas trout farmers have to prop up their economics by charging the public $6 a day for the right to catch a trout. New Zealanders are quite content to have the existing system where for just $l2 any New Zealander can

fish virtually anywhere in the country for 12 months,” Mr Orman said. Evidence from Canada and the United States showed that raising trout for table food sale was limited and that fish farmers had to sell fishing rights and fry to liberate in streams, he said. Research indicated that trout farms would have to retail trout to the public at $lO a kilogram, making it too costly for most New Zealanders.

“Fish-out ponds” were against the law and traditions in New Zealand and sportsmen-run hatcheries and Internal Affairs Department hatcheries were able to supply what little demand there was for liberating trout in streams, Mr Orman said. There was also a mass of evidence received from Britain and the United States that indicated the problems of trout farming. “It was remarkable thatMr Batey had omitted to mention that diseases such as ulcerative dermal necrosis had spread

throughout wild! populations of trout and salm-. on in Britain, after reputedly starting a trout farm many decades ago,” Mr Orman said.

Another disease, infectious pancreatic necrosis, had started at trout farms in Anglia two years ago and it had since “leap-frogged” from one farm to another and had even broken out in a Scottish salmon research laboratory. Mr Orman said he found Mr Batey’s suggestion of establishing trout farms with their allied “fish-out ponds” to be of variance with the whole pattern of tradition and law in New Zealand where it was forbidden to sell fishing rights. The Ministry would be better to concentrate on preventing the rape of sea fish resources as was happening in areas each as Tasman Bay where scallops and snapper were being savagely harvested under a lethargic departmental administration, Mr Orman said.