[Ag-eq] New Zealand! a post from my sister

[Fred Web]

Hi Tracy, Jewel, and all!
I'm finally figuring out my email.  I've been unable to easily read or reply since November?  

Anyhow, mussel and oyster farms usually look like long lines of bouys or floats out in a cove fjord, or lagoon.  Sometimes, it'll have a wooden dock or deck for a farmer's boat to tie-up.  Hanging from the floats are long mesh bags.  You put the baby mussels and oysters in the bags, and pull out the adults.  Tidal flow and currents wash plankton  through the mesh bags, which the filter feeding mollusks gobble up.  The floatlines drift around with the ebb and flow of tides.  Farming like this is much more efficient, since the farmer can control or monitor who or what gets close to the nets.  Harvesting is a simple matter of hauling the net into a boat, opening it, grabbing the market-sized shellfish,  securing the bag, and lowering it overboard.  Farmers don't have to scrabble around on rocky shores or sticky mudflats!  Also, the farm creates habitat for sea creatures that often like to hide among the bags, or in the shade beneath.  
That's all for now!
Fred C
Carlsbad CA  
Here is a link to Okiki's oysters:  http://okiwibayoysters.co.nz/our-story/  


>What's a mussel farm?  Is it just a mussel bed in the ocean, purposely set
>up?
>Tracy
>
 >some of the many inlets / bays and the many commercial oyster  And mussel
>farms. Drop down to Elaine ignoring the temptation to go to French Pass
>