Fish left as firm looks overseas

By SIMON COLLINS and IRENE CHAPPLE

Maori-owned fishing company Moana Pacific is taking its fish farming plans overseas because of the costs of seeking planning consents in New Zealand.

The company last month abandoned plans for a kingfish farm that would have employed 10 to 15 people at Peach Cove in Whangarei Harbour after residents and the Conservation Department lodged appeals against it.

Chief executive Bruce Young said yesterday that he now hoped to invest in a fish farm overseas.

"We are reasonably disillusioned with the resource management process and probably will focus on aquaculture opportunities offshore. That's what we are currently deliberating," he said.

"If the consents are not going to be readily available you have to go offshore where Governments are more than willing to see development take place."

He was speaking as the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (Niwa) dumped 7500 surplus young kingfish in the sea at its Bream Bay hatchery near Marsden Pt.

Niwa is selling between 25,000 and 30,000 young kingfish to what it describes as "a new commercial venture" which will be New Zealand's first kingfish farm. The farm does not want to be named.

Two Maori groups in the Far North are also looking at a joint venture for a land-based kingfish farm.

The Government imposed a moratorium on new marine farms in November 2001 after a flood of more than 200 applications for farms that would have covered about 45,000ha of coastline - almost 10 times the area of existing shellfish and salmon farms.

A new law due to be introduced this year will require regional councils to designate "aquaculture management areas" where marine farms will be permitted after the moratorium ends on March 26 next year.

Moana Pacific's application for Peach Cove was lodged before the moratorium started, and was granted a permit by the Northland Regional Council last December.

However, Whangarei District councillor Robin Lieffering said a large number of objectors lodged appeals against the permit because the company failed to seek a discharge consent for fish effluent.

"There is sufficient evidence from overseas where these discharges kill everything that lies on the seabed," she said.

"There are a lot of potential diseases for caged fish that can spread to wild fish. In this particular place, fishing is a major recreational activity."

Whangarei kayaker and conservationist Sandy Page said the proposed farm was just offshore from a conservation area of outstanding scenic quality.

"From the sea you look up and see these great cliffs covered in bush. If you look at the visual impact, it's just absolutely the wrong spot," she said.

Mr Young said Moana Pacific wanted only a five-year consent for Peach Cove and was prepared to move elsewhere in the long term in a joint venture with the Ngati Wai iwi.

"The whole idea was that we did this first one with Ngati Wai. We would look to train some of their people, and they would take over eventually," he said.

"Then we would pick other iwi groups around the country and do it again. We would put them close to areas of Maori settlement where these people could get a productive enterprise at their back door. We could easily have eight to 10 of them.

"But at the end of the day ... someone is still taking it to the Environment Court, and therein lies five years of delay and another $2 million."