Truly Green – New Zealand’s greenshell mussel
Farmed New Zealand Greenshell Mussels are greener than you think! Unique to our cold coastal waters, each mussel filters 360L of water a day, improving water quality and promoting a healthy ocean habitat for all species. They are an ancient and vital part of our marine food web. Forget “paleo”, Greenshell mussels belong to a genus which is “cretaceous” having been working hard for ocean health for over 170 million years. Huge areas of our coastal seafloor were once covered in mussel reefs where millions of mussels grew en-messe. The mussel beds provided food, shelter and protection for marine flora and fauna and helped to stabilise bottom sediments. Sadly, most of these reefs were destroyed through unsustainable fishing practises including dredging and bottom trawling. Farmed New Zealand Greenshell Mussels are one of the world’s most environmentally friendly protein sources, requiring just mussels, seawater and Kiwi ingenuity. Suspended on ropes anchored to the seafloor, they filter feed just as they would in the wild, extracting all the nutrients they require. These nutrients come from rich phytoplankton, tiny micro-algae which
turn sunlight into energy and are the beginning of all life in the ocean. Sea cucumbers, starfish, sea urchins and gastropods are attracted from outside farms to the food supplied by a “mussel farm reef ’. In turn, they feed spotties and triplefins throughout the year and
occasionally leatherjackets, stargazers, blue cod, mullet and flatfish. Snapper are often seen feeding off mussel lines. Seals hunt prey
around mussel farms and use the farm buoys to rest and sunbathe. The farms also allow seabirds both feeding and roosting opportunities. Even the common and bottlenose dolphins have been known to use farms to herd their prey. Mussel farms partially compensate for the loss of both wild mussel beds by providing renewable mussel stocks and habitats that increase the abundance of organisms that once would have been plentiful. The same principle lies behind the Hauraki gulf revival project, find out more about this from http:// www.reviveourgulf.org.nz/ What a delicious environmental hero farmed Greenshell Mussels are.
FROM THE WILD OCEAN TO YOUR KITCHEN Orders of wild paua are caught, packed, and airfreighted straight to your kitchen. From boat to plate, PauaCo can trace every paua back to the area it was caught. New Zealand Wild Pāua is unique in looks, flavour and quality, add it to your menu today.
PAUACO LIMITED. PO Box 19936, Christchurch 8241, New Zealand T: +64 3 982 3008 E: orders@pauaco.co.nz February 2019
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