PORTOBELLO HATCHERY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20708, 4 May 1929, Page 22

PORTOBELLO HATCHERY.

At a meeting of the board of the Marine Fisheries Investigation Station, popularly known as the Portobello Hatchery, held on April 30, the chairman (Mr G. M. Thomson, M.L.C.) stated that Lieutenant Shropshire, hydrographer to the Byrd Antarctic expedition, and at present attached to the .U.S. barque City of New York, lying at Port Chalmers, had been of the greatest assistance to Messrs Adams and Broadley at the station. Lieutenant Shropshire had been taking temperatures and water samples for estimation of salinity and phosphate content at various depths. This work was commenced some two miles E.S.E. of Otago Heads, and has now been carried out on this section to a distance of four miles.

Mr Schofield, lightkeeper at Cape Saunders, who has been taking temperature observations and collecting water samples tlmre, leaves shortly for Puysegur Point lighthouse. He has volunteered to carry on similar' work at his new station—an offer which the board has gratefully accepted. The conditions at Puysegur, where the Australian subtropical current impinges on the New Zealand coast, are different from those of the colder south-west current which flows up the Otago coast, . Recently, in crossing the channel, the board’s launch struck some submerged object, probably a log: brought down by the Leith flood, and lost her , propeller. Attempts to recover it by diving and by means of-the trawl were unsuccessful. The board proposes to install a new more powerful/engine,in the launch to enable her to work in deeper water.