Application 124771 - Ministry of Fisheries

CAWTHRON INSTITUTE | REPORT NO. 2134 MAY 2012
1. BACKGROUND
In August 2011, a collective of inshore mussel farmers from Coromandel approached
Cawthron Institute (Cawthron) to provide baseline benthic assessments of effects, as
a part of their applications for 1 ha extensions to their mussel farms. These ‘baseline’
assessments and their structure are detailed in the Waikato Regional Council (WRC)
Draft Coastal Plan. However, many of the farms in question had recently been issued
with off-site and over-size notices by WRC and in most cases the extensions being
applied for were already being farmed. Consequently, it was not possible to provide
true ‘pre-impact’ baseline data for the proposed extensions. Following liaison with
WRC, it was agreed that full baseline surveys for each extension would be
unproductive and instead a rationalised approach should be used to fulfil the
requirements of the Coastal Plan.
To accomplish this, a wider-scale assessment programme was agreed upon by WRC,
Cawthron and the collective of farmers, whereby eight representative ‘reference’
farms (Table 1) were selected for full benthic and water column assessments to
provide an indication of the effects of mussel farms, and six ‘control’ sites were
selected to provide a ‘baseline’ or ‘background’ assessment of the unfarmed benthic
and water column environments. The reference farms and control sites were chosen
to span the majority of the inshore mussel farm region along on the western side of
the Coromandel Peninsula from Wilsons Bay to Colville Bay (Figure 1). This report
summarises the results from this wider-scale assessment and individual farm
extension reports are appended to this document.
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