Friday, June 1, 2012

Measuring Paua

I've been spending the week helping measure paua at the aquaculture facility over at Mahanga Bay. These are offspring from Broodstock from all over NZ- Tory Channel, Kaikoura, Chatham Islands, Wairarapa.
There are over 100 families breed here- crossing this means a huge number to measure. On Thursday we measured over 1200 paua!!! Whew!- Graeme Moss said that was a record. (I'm dreaming about these slimy things now!!)                                                          

Tank of paua. These are about 18 months old. They are the beautiful blue colour because of the food they are being fed.


Each paua is tagged with a disc on a small spring. This is attached to the side of the shell and the shell then continues to grow around it.

Graeme carefully getting the paua for us to measure. The water was freezing so he kindly let me off me  doing this! There were 18 tanks in all. Some above others (like pictured here)

                                                               Measuring the paua- anywhere between 30-70mm average.

                                                                            Weighing the paua on their shell. They turn themselves over if you are too slow- then stick to the plate. (I wonder how I know that!!)

The tag number is recorded on this data base with the animal's length and weight. Then they are divided into one of 4 new trays or culled.

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