Rock lobster industry commentator Daryl Sykes provides the first of an intended series of articles exploring the development and growth of the industry
As a nation, New Zealand has an enviable record of invention and innovation. There are many examples of the outputs of the number 8 wire approach to both industry and commerce – some quite spectacular, for example the Hamilton jet or the Gallagher electric fence. Innovation and entrepreneurial endeavour have been strong in the rock lobster industry for as long as it has existed. A study of the history books will confirm there was a domestic market for rock lobsters as far back as 1772 when the explorer Furneaux completed a transaction with Cape Palliser Maori, when he bought ‘a great quantity of crayfish’ with iron nails and woven cloth.
Records of commercial transactions are sporadic for many years after that but by the 1920’s there were several commercial rock lobster fishing operations being established around the North Island. In August 1938 several regulations were applied to ensure lobster populations were not overfished. What were then innovative rules including the implementation of minimum legal capture sizes (since modified many times), prohibitions on landing egg-bearing females, and restrictions on the numbers of licences available to lobster fishermen.
There were also many innovations across the catching sector in those early years. The introduction of more powerful engines to power larger vessels, which had a greater range of operation and could carry more gear heralded the expansion of the industry at the end of World War II. Expansion was driven by the emergence of an export market for the seafood delicacy. The contingents of US Marines resident in various New Zealand r’n’r camps during the war had the opportunity to sample a true cold-water lobster and were mightily impressed with its deliciousness. On their return home to the USA the marines sought out a supply of what to them, had become a seafood staple.
New Zealand fishermen and processors moved quickly to satisfy the export demand for frozen lobster tails and the industry became increasingly more specialised and efficient. In the immediate post-war period vessels were being fitted with echo sounder technology refined during the war. Before echo sounders the technique for determining depth and bottom substrate was the admiralty ‘lead line’ for which a lead weight was cupped inward at the base and filled with grease. A marked rope with the weight attached was dropped overboard and used to bring up samples from the seabed. The technique required skill, took considerable time, and lacked precision at a larger scale – but it worked well enough in the absence of anything better.
In 1928 a British inventor produced a rudimentary depth sounder using principles of echo location and this eventually gave way to SONAR technology, crucial in sea navigation. For the lobster fleet, depth was obviously an important factor but so too was the condition of the sea floor. Hard rocky reef habitat is home to rock lobsters and placing pots or traps accordingly will greatly enhance fishing success. Through the 1950’s to the early 1970’s the lobster fleet relied on ‘paper sounders’ in which a stylus arcing across to specially treated paper produced a visual record of a depth reading. The intensity of the visual mark was an indication of the ‘hardness’ of the seabed and in time the most sophisticated and expensive paper sounders were more than paying for themselves because fishermen could set pots where they had the best chance of success.
The discovery of new fishing grounds along the remote Fiordland coastline in the 1960’s prompted another notable innovation – processing of lobster tails at sea. Southland fishermen were initially deprived of an opportunity to capitalise on the export market because they were fishing such long distances from approved processing facilities and at the time did not have the technology to keep lobsters alive long enough to return to port and unload. In addition, until the 1970’s there were no regular helicopter transport options available to fishermen operating in the most remote areas of the West Coast. Innovation came in the form of freezers being installed on their boats so that lobster tails could be held at -16 degrees and re-processed when landed at the end of an extended trip. The tailing at sea opportunity was strictly limited to the southern rock lobster fleet and was rigorously policed by the Marine Department and relevant food safety agencies.
So, a short pause at this stage of the story to remind readers New Zealand rock lobsters were not always the high-priced premium seafood delight they are today. Even with a buoyant US market, the beach prices paid to fishermen through the 1960’s and 1970’s were very modest in comparison to the peaks of the Asian live lobster markets that developed in the 1980’s. In fact, before the roll out of the Quota Management System (QMS) in the mid-1980’s, most if not all rock lobster fishermen right around the New Zealand coastline would likely have considered themselves to be diversified inshore fishermen, with a seasonal portfolio of fishing methods and target fisheries. Quota reductions for most finfish species in 1986 forced greater reliance on lobsters for their annual income.
One aspect of lobster fishing always under review is gear design. From the 1960’s to the late 1970’s fishermen were quickly making the transition from the old-style lightweight ‘beehive’ pots to the more durable steel welded mesh ‘cages.’ Round beehive pots moved in a big swell, often twisting across the seabed and winding the ropes and floats under, never to be retrieved again. On the Wairarapa coast in the early 1970’s it was not unusual for the beach launched boats to work up to 150 pots in a day. One big southerly storm could wipe out half of those overnight.
More innovation was applied to making pots more durable. Rust was the enemy and various treatments were applied over the years. The old-style tar pit treatment was widely used, where old and new pots were submerged in boiling tar – often perked from the surplus disposed of by roading contractors – and hung to dry. It was a dirty, messy job and it was only reasonably effective, other than many fishermen believed that tarred pots caught better than raw steel ones. The most effective gear innovation was galvanising or the use of sacrificial anodes on steel pots.
Those were definite rust beaters and lengthened the working life of pots and reduced the number of replacements required each season, but pot loss in storms was still an issue so the gear started to become progressively heavier and often larger. A standard steel welded mesh pot in 1971 was #8 gauge wire and about three foot square standing 14 to 18 inches high with a dab of concrete, maybe a couple of sash weights or a few chain plates fixed to the base. Within a few years, mesh was built from heavier #6 gauge wire and pots were fitted with a house brick wired into each of the four corners or steel bars welded across the base. It did not take too long for fishermen to figure out the concept of ‘pots for spots’ and whilst the smaller gear was deployed in shallow water, larger and heavier gear started to show up in the form of one metre square mesh pots with multiple entrances and steel welded frames covered with trawl mesh or similar laced on with stainless steel wire. Such pots are still in common use.
Heavier gear required heavier lifting tackle. In the developmental years of the lobster fisheries, it was not uncommon for pots to be pulled by hand. Early mechanical winches on small boats were Heath-Robinson affairs often using the gear box units of old wringer washing machines with power supplied by small lawnmower engines. The gear boxes were fitted with small surge drums, and it was a skilful fisherman who could slip the pot rope on a surge drum to prevent the small boat tipping over if a jammed pot was encountered.
The larger boats with inboard engines opened the world of hydraulics and somewhere along the timeline of the 1970’s, fishermen also discovered the alloy or steel plate line haulers and rope ‘peelers’ used in overseas fisheries. The first hydraulic power units on small vessels were power steering units (the 70’s series Holdens had a reputation for reliability) but purpose-built hydraulics manufactured and marketed by Hamilton in Christchurch very quickly became the haulers of choice.
By the mid-1980’s operators had greatly improved the efficiency of catching lobsters and achieved some reduction of operating costs. The challenge was then with processors and exporters to increase the value of the product. There was one small processor willing to meet the challenge. From a small fishing village on the South Wairarapa coastline, a company named Ngawi Packers, owned by a consortium of three local fishermen and a Wellington fish retailer, opened the live lobster market to Japan. Within three years the lobster industry had reduced its dependency on the otherwise static US tail market and was building on the lucrative Asian live lobster market pioneered by Ngawi Packers.
Just in time too. The economic performance of the lobster industry had been in decline before the QMS and the live lobster market was a significant buffer at the time and has turned out to be an enduring one.
In the next episode: – Investment and strategic planning; consolidating the long-term sustainable utilisation of New Zealand lobster fisheries.
