|
Cawthron’s aquaculture production R&D is done at the Cawthron Aquaculture Park, 15 minutes drive from Nelson, on the coast of Tasman Bay, behind the famous Boulder Bank, in an area locally known as "The Glen".
The Glen is an ideal site for this work for three reasons:
| 1. |
The seawater is of constant quality because there is no major freshwater inflow nearby and there is little suspended matter in the water during the rare Northerly storms. |
| 2. |
The land behind the Boulder Bank lies below spring high tide. This allows us to fill ponds with fresh seawater at no cost. |
| 3. |
The Glen is one of the sunniest spots in New Zealand: plenty of sunlight for phytoplankton production in the ponds. We use this phytoplankton to grow shellfish spat and to condition broodstock. |
The Glen provides facilities for the development of commercial shellfish hatchery technology and for selective breeding:
| 1. |
Our intensive algae culture facility produces 2000 litres per day ‘gourmet’ algae for larval rearing and broodstock conditioning. |
| 2. |
Broodstock conditioning is done in temperature-controlled tanks with a choice of food. |
| 3. |
We have a Breeding Room big enough to produce 64 families in parallel or commercial quantities of mussel and oyster spat. |
| 4. |
The nursery provides over 300m2 of floor space for spat rearing, be it as families or as commercial batches. |
Cawthron plans to extend our 3-hectare R&D facility into a 16-hectare Aquaculture Park that will host several commercial hatcheries, nurseries and finishing facilities. There will also be facilities for finfish R&D.
|
