Sustainable seafood harvesting

Dave Woods, a member of our Club, the Rotary Club of Timaru, gave us a fascinating talk about new fish harvesting systems being developed by Precision Seafood Harvesting, the company he manages, and for which he won one the 2014 Innovator of the Year award.  The aim of the project is to develop new seafood harvesting methods and equipment that helps the industry land fish in the best possible condition and reduce the by-catch of under-size fish.

 

His brand is called Tiaki ( Maori for ‘to protect’ or ‘guardian’) , whereby the old blue PVC nets are replaced with  high polyethylene ( Kevlar) nets which are  high strength and lightweight and with new handling systems, the fish caught suffer no fatigue.

 

Twelve vessels fishing in the Hauraki Gulf, around Great Barrier Island and in the Nelson area are learning to use this new technology. It is important to keep the fish alive and the new water tank systems have increased their survival rates. The fish are then sold to Auckland, Hawaii, Melbourne, Sydney and China for sashimi.

 

The new technology is a work in progress and Dave said they are trying to get validation of survivability in storage tanks. Boat design and capacity are important for vessel stability and design and naval architects are employed to oversee this. NIWA scientists are collecting data for the validation process and Dave said he is encouraged by the draft results. High quality seafood is the hoped for outcome – “ the best fish caught the best way”.

 

They are now working on inshore protocols and need the Ministry to endorse their results. They have produced videos for scientists and fishing companies and so far, their results have been endorsed by people with a high public profile, such as Al Brown (chef), Nathan Guy ( Minister of Agriculture), the King of the Netherlands and Prince Charles!