Roughy survey pleases

Press, 8 September 1982, Page 7

Roughy survey pleases

A survey of orange roughy on the Chatham Rise, made by fisheries research scientists, has been described as most encouraging. The scientists, from the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries Research Division, returned to Dunedin on Sunday after a six-week research cruise aboard a cooperative venture vessel. The leader of the research team, Dr Don ■ Robertson, said that high catch rates in the first part of thp trip, good weather, and rapid progress contributed to the successful completion of the survey. Its results “will enable an estimation of the biomass of the trawlable populations of orange roughy and 10 major by-catch species along the Northern Chatham Rise,” said Dr Robertson. The team achieved an important condition of the programme, which was to catch 1000 tonnes green weight of orange roughy in exchange for the charter of the vessel.

"This cruise points to the possibility of joint commercial and research cruises for research on otherwise inaccessible fish populations in the deep offshore waters of the New Zealand exclusive economic zone,” Dr Robertson said.

Trawl samples were taken from an area 800 km long and up to 32km wide, from east

of the Chatham Islands to east of Banks Peninsula, to depths beyond 1000 metres. During the cruise the fisheries research vessel James Cook made a temperaturesalinity survey of the area to complement the fishery data. The results will be combined in a report which should be completed in six months.