An early breakfast and a quick Skype home before being picked up outside the hotel by David Cooper of the MTI. David lives just outside Auckland so he makes the hour long journey to Warkworth every day, luckily for me the hotel is on the way.
David is the Special Projects manager for MTI and on our journey to Warkworth he tells me all about his background in the aquarium trade and how he came to work for MTI. David is a “fish nut”, as we say in the trade, so passionate about his work and his love for all things fishy that can be cultured. He is really engaging about all things and so we cover fish, families, politics, it’s a really easy hour.
When we arrive David gives me a quick tour and overview of the whole business. It’s a privately run institute and covers a huge variety of marine and aquaculture issues. MTI offers training on Marine Engineering, hospitality, fire fighting/lifesaving as wells as the aquaculture research.
David then introduced me to Paul Decker, the Director of the Institute. Over coffee we discuss our backgrounds and the vagaries of the aquaculture industry, feels like I’m talking to two old mates. Paul is a True Blue Susie with a very jovial and friendly misdemeanour which belies his shrewd acumen and a wealth of technical and practical experience. It is obvious that he is held in high esteem by his colleagues.
After a tour of his native New Zealand fish species aquaria, David takes me just down the road to a private fish farm who MTI use for supplying research fish. It’s quite a large site with many large ponds growing grass carp, silver carp or goldfish/koi carp. In one corner of the farm was a 3m diameter fibreglass tank which David tells me contains silver carp. I was aware of the reputation of grass carp for jumping when being spooked but this was something different. David put a net in the tank and stirred it around as I leant over the edge to see what was in there. After a few seconds I jumped back to avoid the explosion of huge carp (10-15lb) shooting across the tank in mid-air at a rate of knots. So ferocious was the response that one fish actually jumped clean out of the tank.
Nearby carp and ornamental farm
juvenile grass carp ready to be shipped out for weed control
one of the torpedo like silver carp that jumped out, they'll knock your head off.
After this we went to a small restaurant in Warkworth on the banks of the Mahurangi River. This area was famous for being the first big commercial logging town in NZ. We had a chicken salad sandwich that must have been nearly 8 inches wide, I think they call that deep filled.
Back to MTI and ready for the “Eel experience”. Paul had insisted that he lead this tour. Unfortunately, one of the MTI staff, Tagried (who I had been corresponding with prior to the trip) was not there, she was in Borneo on research. However, fortunately for me I had met her just before Christmas. She lives in Buckinghamshire part of the year and NZ the rest. She phoned me up just before Christmas to say she was in the country and asked if she and her husband could visit my hatchery on the 23rd December. It was great to meet her and her husband and we had some very long and intense discussions.
Paul showed me his broodstock tanks, black header tanks of about 250 litres, each with their own lid and photo manipulation light. I saw several sizeable short fin eels and Paul even picked up one of the “River monsters” featured on a recent Discovery Channel programme. According to Paul and David their success was down mostly to broodstock conditioning (by manipulating light and temperature) and they required only one injection to induce spawning. Paul reckoned that with this method they could produce eggs with a high fertilisation virtually 52 weeks of the year.
Broodstock tanks
Director of MTI, Paul Decker with a "river monster", NZ longfin
Of the several tanks of eel in this broodstock room Paul was particularly proud of his “TV stars”. These eels were famous for having featured in an episode of “Spartacus”, the slightly risqué Roman Soap that was recently played out on Sky. The TV Company needed some “tame” eels to use in a scene where they would seductively slither over a naked females body bathing in a spa. The handler would be required to place the eels on the naked girls’ body, possibly over several shots. Paul decided that he was probably best qualified to undertake this task.
One of the famous "Spartacus" eels
We then had a short tour of the egg and larval room which was empty at the moment but it was obvious how these guys used their ingenuity to refine the culture and husbandry techniques as they came up against various problems.
Egg and larval rearing room
It was a very informative and entertaining day and I couldn’t help feeling sorry for the MTI team as they were finding it hard to attract funding to continue the work, this seems to be a similar story wherever I go. Anyway it was nice to be amongst people who get pleasure out of trying to breed aquatic species without the textbook and were excited about constructing new systems that may just solve the mysteries of their life cycles.
Paul (left) and David outside the MTI main lecture rooms and offices
David kindly dropped me at the hotel back in downtown Auckland and we vowed to keep in touch, he is coming over to the UK in May so we hope to meet up then.
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