A record-breaking marine heatwave hurt business and ecosystems this summer, and there is emerging evidence it could happen again next year. How is aquaculture adapting?
Aquaculture is a climate change canary – particularly vulnerable to its effects. But it also has the potential to cash in on an international market protein from more sustainable sources.
The ongoing ocean heatwave has spiked ocean temperatures 5 degrees above normal in parts of the country.
It caused mass bleaching of tens of millions of sea sponges in the southern fjords, which has scientists deeply concerned.
It also forced the country’s largest salmon exporter New Zealand King Salmon to lay off more than 100 staff and close farms in the Marlborough Sounds after it killed 1300 tonnes of fish.
New Zealand King Salmon chief executive Grant Rosewarne said it had been an incredibly difficult time.
“All that’s quite devastating really, and it has just been a terrible outcome.”
The government sees the aquaculture industry, which employs about 3000 people mainly in the regions, as a good bet for producing low emissions protein with international market potential.
In 2019 it released a roadmap to increase output by a factor of five, to $3 billion in annual revenue by 2035.
Part of that increase would come come from a move into open ocean farming – with a decision on New Zealand King Salmon’s resource consent application to farm fish in the cooler waters of the Cook Strait due within months.
Rosewarne said practical support by the government in the form of bespoke legislation to let it farm in open waters would have avoided the lengthy RMA process, and the blow to its business this summer.
He said the government has been clear it wants to take action on climate change, and to expand the aquaculture sector.
Rosewarne said the technology for farming the Cook Strait was available now, so why wouldn’t the government pull every lever possible to get it to happen.
“When you’ve got a climate change situation where there is a known solution and it can be done, it is frustrating that we can’t make progress.
“And heaven help us in other areas [of climate change policy] where there aren’t known easy solutions, because that’s going to be a lot harder.”
“[The government seems] unable to put the two together and get it going.
“And as I said, that’s has a huge cost to our shareholders, to our team members, to our fish. It’s just been a tragedy for us. And it’s all avoidable.”
