Shellfish
BY NICKI HOLMYARD
Flipping clever An idea from New Zealand has the potential to overturning the global oyster industry
S
EASONED oyster farmer Aaron Pannell, of Marlborough Oysters Ltd in New Zealand, has revolu�onised his business over the past few years. Now, he wants the world to know that oyster farming in the 21st century can be efficient, produc�ve and profitable. The solu�on, he says, is the FlipFarm. Pannell spoke to Fish Farmer about the highs and lows of a journey that has led to the roll-out of a product that could save the industry many thousands of hours. Pannell, who started the company with his wife, Debbie, in 2011, has more than 25 years’ experience in aquaculture and marine farming engineering. He also has a passion for innova�ve technology, which led him to analyse how things could be done be�er. Ini�ally the farm was based on a floa�ng plas�c mesh bag system secured between a double backbone headline. As demand grew, and Marlborough Oysters became one of the country’s largest producers, with 20 million shells in the water, Pannell hit a series of biological, meteorological and staffing crises. He recognised that he needed to overhaul the business. An oyster virus and a plague of flatworms destroyed more than half of the stock, biofouling became intense,and a major storm added to the Pannells’ woes, with overall losses es�mated at around A$1.5 million (£800,000).
30
Shellfish v2.indd 30
Equipment failure was an ongoing issue, with the webbing lanyards that a�ached the oyster bags to the longlines constantly chafing through. This led to a large maintenance bill and the loss of many bags. While trying out various containers and baskets to come up with a solu�on, Pannell bought another small local oyster company, which had some Hexcyl Pro Series rigid hexagonal oyster baskets lying around. A�er much experimenta�on with different clips and a�achments, he tried threading a rope through the middle of these baskets. His “eureka” moment came when he returned to li� the line to clean the oysters and no�ced that all the baskets automa�cally flipped over and that the animals were all in premium condi�on. “That moment not only changed my life, but also changed the oyster farming industry. I saw that the need to constantly turn bags could be eliminated; all that was needed was a reliable way to flip them,” Pannell says. Following some fine-tuning of machinery and proving of the system, he changed his opera�on from bags to baskets and found that the labour saving was considerable. Previously it took a whole week to turn 40,000 bags, but with the prototype FlipFarm, the job could be done in a ma�er of hours. According to Pannell, his system offers a “sleek and efficient solu�on to many of the issues that oyster farmers encounter with exis�ng growing methods,” not least the provision of a good environment for growth and condi�oning of oysters. He is delighted that the system has improved the
That “ moment
not only changed my life but also changed the oyster farming industry
”
www.fishfarmermagazine.com
07/02/2022 14:51:07
