Photo: Supplied / Emilee Benjamin
Kaitiakitanga, or guardianship, is driving a project to restore wild mussel beds around the ocean floor at the top of the South Island after years of overfishing.
The Ministry for Primary Industries (MPI) has allocated $667,500 over the next two years to help fund several PhD (postgraduate research) projects and to pay for materials.
The project aims to help mussel beds recover naturally around Tasman and Marlborough, which have been impacted by historical commercial overfishing.
In December, researchers deployed four tonnes of mussel shells into plots raised off the seabed at Pelorus Bay in an attempt to attract young new mussels, known as spats.
University of Auckland marine ecologist Emilee Benjamin said they would then deploy mussels around Golden Bay and Delaware Bay by July - to test the experiments there to bolster local populations.
"Without the juvenile recruitment, you're basically threatening the longevity of the reef, so we need those baby mussels to come into our adult mussel reefs to help sustain the population long term," Benjamin said.
"Where we're at right now is to develop new deployment plans in Mohua [Golden Bay] and Wakapuaka [Delaware Bay].
"So we are basically gearing up to undergo our first mussel deployments in these two new regions."
University of Auckland marine ecologist Emilee Benjamin is part of a project which aims to help mussel beds recover naturally around Tasman and Marlborough. Photo: Supplied / Emilee Benjamin
There was great interest from the project's partners including iwi, hapū, conservation and research organisations in improving natural recruitment and enhancing and restoring mussel beds, Benjamin said.
"It is an ambitious project and one of the reasons why we felt confident... is largely due to our collaboration," she said.
"We have a huge, huge invested collaborators both with the aquaculture industry, the community, the iwi members, The Nature Conservancy, partners even with NIWA [National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research] and the Department of Conservation. So there's a lot of people who are excited to see this restoration move forward.
"I think that what unites us all is taking care of our backyards, so I think there's a sense of guardianship among all the collaborators of taking care and trying to restore these environments."
Photo: Supplied / Emilee Benjamin
Benjamin said it was an exciting time for the industry, with similar projects happening in the Hauraki Gulf.
Partners in the project were the Marine Farming Association, Sanford, MacLab, Talleys, Kono, University of Auckland, Marlborough District Council, NIWA, MFC Mussels & Logistics, The Nature Conservancy, Te Tau Ihu Fisheries Forum, NMIT, Mohua Marine Trust, KMTT Alliance, and the Wakapuaka Taipure Committee.
The project comes on the back of Benjamin's PhD which she completed in September 2022 - which was supported by MPI's Sustainable Farming Fund.
