Salmon hatchery take-over?

Press, 18 February 1983, Page 6

Salmon hatchery take-over?

A commercial take-over of the Government salmon hatchery at Silverstream could take the pressure off natural spawning grounds. The Christchurch company, Lane Walker Rudkin, Ltd, is negotiating through the Fisheries Research Division to leake the hatchery, which has been mothballed because of the low rate of returning fish. It is a sensitive issue with local anglers who are worried about company plans to hatch and raise ova there for its Hurunui and Tasman salmon companies. They fear that if the ova are taken from fish returning to the hatchery it will mean they lose later catches in the Waimakariri River system.

The scientist in charge of the division in Christchurch,

Dr R. M. McDowall, said that it was already hard pressed to supply salmon farmers with the estimated three million ova that they sought each year. Lane Walker Rudkin alone wanted a million ova for its two farming ventures. These' could either come from spawning grounds such as Winding Creek or this year.from fish returning to the Silverstream hatchery. “We are going to get opposition to these sorts of things all the way along, but we have to protect the wild stocks as best we can,” he said. “Every fish that we take from Silverstream will presumably mean one less taken from the wild.”

The project, run under the division’s supervision, would make use of valuable facilities that would otherwise

“gather dust.” Last year, virtually no fish were provided for commercial ventures and if there was another bad season, Dr McDowall said, the Christchurch company would probably have to share some of its ova with other salmon farmers.

The North Canterbury Acclimatisation Society has said it wants to keep faith with fishermen by asking certain conditions, in the hope that the salmon run started by the hatchery will not peter out within the next two years, as expected. Society councillors meeting earlier this week agreed to leasing the hatchery but wanted the company to release 50 per cent of ova taken from returning Silverstream fish, rather than the suggested 10 per cent, back

into the river system. They also wanted the obstruction, which funnels all salmon into the hatchery, removed to allow some to continue naturally upstream into the river headwaters.

The society’s president. Mr W. J. McKillop, said that fish taken from the Waimakariri should be returned to the same river.

“We have got to stand up and be counted,” he s aid.

Other councillors expressed concern that if commercial expansion continued, anglers would end up paying the company for fish they caught. A spokesman for Lane Walker Rudkin was reluctant last evening to comment on the project, which he said depended on conditions still to be set by the Government.