SALMON IN NEW ZEALAND WATERS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2390, 21 December 1899, Page 47

SALMON IN NEW ZEALAND WATERS.

"Without doubt the acclimatisation of the salmon in New Zealand waters would be a work of national importance, and it is to be regretted that tho most l'ecent shipment of salmon ova failed so disastrously, as Mr Ayson, from the experience gained on his travels in Europe and America, is in a better position to give the fish a chance to live after the young fiy have been hatched out. However, the end aimed at is of so great commercial importance that further efforts must bo made, and wo need not be over much discouraged at past failures. Mr Ayson, at any rate, is not > going to allow the problem to remain unsolved without doing something further towards its solution. He paid a recent visit to Oamaru for tho purpose of making inquiries as to the suitability of the Hnkataramea River for a hatchery, at the point of its junction with the Waitaki at Hakataramea township, opposite ICurow. Not only have magnificent salmon trout been captured in the great snow-fed boundary liver between Otago and Canterbury, but in its lower reaches fish have been caught at times which have been pronounced to be true salmon by English experts. In view of that fact Mr Ayson purposes establishing a hatchery somewhere on the Waitaki. No better site, we imagine, could be selected than the mouth of the Hakataramea Stream, which is itself snow-fed in its upper reaches, and flows over a clear shingle bed down the Hakataramea Valley, debouching through a rocky gorge into the Waitaki. Tho Hakataramea Valley consists, for the most part, of alluvial terraces — the detritus of the surrounding mountains, — and since the soil is generally of volcanic origin, more or less strewn with basaltic boulders and shingle, the valley is not likely to prove auriferous. The chances of the Hakataramea Stream being polluted by gold workings is, therefore, remote, so that it ought to bo just the thing for a salmon hatchery. Very early in the history of attempted salmon acclimatisation a salmon hatchery was established pn the Clutha River, or rather at the mouth of the Waiwera River where it debouches into the Clutha, but the turbid waters of the Clutha are wholly unsuited for salmon, although they were not so dirty at the timo when the salmon ponds were constructed. The .Waitaki, on the other hand, is a cleariffater stream^ and for the greater part

of the year its waters are as blue as those of the ocean. Consequently a hatchery on the Waitaki, where the fish could be retained in ponds until of a good strong growth, would in a few years' time solve the problem either one way or the other — either prove the practicability or hopelessness of acclimatising the salmon in these waters. If large numbers of fish are liberated yearly for a few years there is always the chance of a few surviving, and thus laying the foundation of a New Zealand type, for it is tolerably certain that if ever the salmon becomes acclimatised it wnl show some modification, of the parent type, as in the case of other acclimatised fishes.