Salmon farming

Our interest in salmon farming

The Department of Conservation’s website states: ‘New Zealand is a world hotspot for biodiversity … We have over 17,000 known species and more are being discovered all the time. Experts estimate up to 85% of New Zealand wildlife could be in the ocean … In a 2008 global study on known marine wildlife found that New Zealand ranked the highest in the world for our proportion of native species. This is because of the isolation of Australia and New Zealand, which separated from other land masses about 83 million years ago. Over half of our 17,000 reported species are endemic, which means they are only found here. This includes over 6000 known species of invertebrates, and hundreds of seaweeds and fish.’

In order to understand the issues confronting our oceans, the Institute has focused on applications by New Zealand King Salmon (NZKS) to extend water use in the Marlborough Sounds. The Institute believes all applications that are likely to impact the biodiversity of inshore waterways require special consideration.

About New Zealand King Salmon

New Zealand King Salmon Investments Limited, together with its subsidiaries, engages in the farming, processing, and sale of premium salmon products in a number of countries including New Zealand, China, North America, Australia, Japan, Europe. NZKS is listed on the New Zealand Stock Exchange, learn more here.

As a result of rising water temperatures, NZKS is becoming an early victim of climate change. Recently, NZKS has changed its business model to address this and seek out cooler water to farm salmon. However water temperatures are rising even in Cook Strait, where they are currently applying to farm salmon (see the Blue Endeavour application below). See Working Paper 2021/14 – The Role of Water Temperature in Climate Change Policy – A New Zealand King Salmon Case Study.

NZKS also contributes to climate change by emitting carbon when importing fish feed, cooling water, and exporting salmon.

Table 1 below lists submissions made by the Institute in response to applications made by NZKS. These insights have also led to working papers (found here) and letters to Ministers (found here).

Table 2: McGuinness Institute NZKS-related research

Table 3: Copies of active NZKS resource consents by site

Table 1: McGuinness Institute submissions on NZKS applications

Table 2: McGuinness Institute NZKS-related research

Table 3: Copies of active NZKS resource consents by site

Note: To be read in conjunction with our Discussion Paper 2023/04: Exploring the role of aquaculture in our marine space (particularly Table 4.1: NZKS salmon farms – By the numbers).

Note: These PDFs are re-uploaded from the Marlborough District Council Property Files Online website and combined where appropriate so that each resource consent has its own individual PDF. We have used the PDF page numbers rather than the page numbers at the bottom of the documents as in some cases the documents contain attachments or sub-documents.