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Oysters
A Profitable New Zealand Industry.

(By T.W.P.)

The port of Bluff, at the southern extremity of the South Island of New Zealand has a natural asset which is of extreme value locally, and also to the South Island generally. Reference is made to the prolific and inexhaustible oyster “beds” of Foveaux Straits. This product of the sea is more largely known as emanating from Stewart Island. That is a mistake. In reality, the beds are many miles nearer to Bluff than to the Island. The first oysters were found in the vicinity of Stewart Island over 70 years ago, but larger and more easily worked deposits were discovered close to Bluff, consequently the Island beds have not been worked for the past fifty or sixty years.

The discovery of oysters in Foveaux Straits was made by a man named Charley Brett, who arrived from Geelong in a small cutter with a man, by name, Roderiques, who had his small family with him as passengers. Brett left Roderiques and secured a schooner in Dunedin —the “Redcliff”; Brett was a fisherman by occupation and he considered that Foveaux Straits was ideal for trawling for fish. In this he was mistaken; although fairly successful in the pursuit, the trawl was continually being damaged by the rough bottom, and every time it was hove up, masses of oysters were enmeshed in the net. Previous to this, rock oysters had been found at Port Pegasus, and mud oysters at Port Adventure. Both varieties were delicious and eagerly sought after, but to prevent extinction, the Government in the seventies placed an embargo on exploitation.

The “beds” in Foveaux Straits are situated in depths of water ranging from 14 to 30 fathoms and extending from east to west in a known length of 60 miles; the beds vary in area with blank spaces between. The first attempts to secure this harvest of the sea were made with hand dredges which were dragged along the sea bed; later, hand winches came into use, then oil power and finally steam, which is in use to-day by the oyster fleet both for propelling and hoisting purposes. One man only—the late Mr. W. Vears, a professional diver—has viewed the deposits on the ocean bed; he descended in 14 fathoms of water off Ruapuke Island and gave a most graphic description of the conditions under which the shell fish thrives. Equipped with a garden fork he traversed some hundreds of yards of the sea floor and wherever he used the fork he found oysters to a depth of 8 to 10 inches; visibility was excellent owing to a countless mantle of white shells which covered the deposits and diffused a reflected luminosity from the sun's rays through the water.

Whilst there was a regular service between Bluff and Melbourne thousands of dozens of oysters were sent to the latter port weekly. Successful transport in New Zealand depends largely upon the railway service. Christchurch citizens can indulge in oysters for breakfast, eighteen hours after they have been brought to the surface. Every Sunday evening during the season, which lasts from February to September, a special train of insulated wagons leaves Bluff for Invercargill at 5 p.m.; here the wagons are connected to the night express which arrives at Christchurch in the early hours of Monday. If there were a connecting boat service with Wellington, the population of that city could regale upon oysters for supper.

Seven powerful steamboats are engaged in the industry and apart from distribution in the fresh state, the succulent bivalve can be procured in a canned condition which compares more than favourably with the imported article. The industry at Bluff is responsible for the employment of fully one hundred persons engaged in dredging, bag filling, etc. When it is taken into consideration the hundreds who are employed in restaurants, the value of the oyster beds in Foveaux Straits, as an asset to the Dominion, cannot be overestimated.