Bruce Campbell, chief operating officer at Plant & Food, said fish ranching would involve a hybrid approach, which would see the building up of wild fish stocks to be harvested later on.
This model is suited to New Zealand, he said, as consumers place a premium on those fish caught in the wild. The program would start with Schnapper fish.
The fish ranching model has the advantage of a small footprint, low energy and infrastructure costs and natural feeding mechanisms, he added.
Emma Timewell, a spokesperson for Plant & Food, told FoodNavigator-Asia that the program is part of its strong commitment to maximising the value and minimising adverse impacts of NZ seafood harvesting.
“Together with our industry partners we have focused on making the best of our fisheries using profitable, sustainable and ethical fishing practices,” she said.
Wildfish 2020
According to Timewell, with Wildfish 2020, as the program is called, Plant & Food is attempting to reset the control, quality and selectivity expectations of the industry and regulatory authorities to levels previously thought impossible using conventional fishing operations.
“We must now determine if we can reset our expectations of the sustainable productivity available from our wild coastal fisheries,” she said.
“In Wildfish 2020, we and our partners will directly contribute to increasing the productivity of biological resources by transforming the wild fish production sector through new production and management technologies,” she added.
Timewell said that these technologies will augment natural, wild seafood production by producing free ranging, naturally recruited, fish ‘herds.’
“The science involves developing hybrid production-harvesting systems that blend wild capture fishing, anthropogenic herding, marine farming and rested or selective harvesting concepts,” she said.
“This vision for enhanced productivity and sustainability of our coastal waters is shared by our industry partners, the government, our research collaborators, recreational fishers, local government and environmental groups.”