Scallop Enhancement
Enhancement is the name given to techniques designed to boost the natural recruitment or survival of young animals or seaweed in the wild. In New Zealand, scallop enhancement has worked well in Tasman Bay and Golden Bay.
The New Zealand scallop is a large fan-shaped shellfish, flat on one side and convex on the other. It lives on the bottom of coastal waters, 30 metres or more deep. Scallop spat-collecting bags are suspended during summer in coastal areas with high natural scallop settlement. The scallop larvae settle out of the plankton onto the fine feathery surface of the plastic mesh bags. The larvae are allowed to grow to a suitable size and are then released onto known natural scallop beds at densities of about six per square metre of sea floor. There, they are later harvested on a rotational basis by dredges. This technique has resulted in a marked increase and stabilising of the available annual catch. The Tasman scallop fishery, near collapse in the 1980s, recovered with re-seeding to a level where 747 tonnes were harvested in 2004.
Read more about this topic: Aquaculture In New Zealand