John Young - Q&A

John Young went from harvesting mussels by hand on the very first mussel raft, to installing the industry’s first longline, to running today’s largest independent mussel company in the Marlborough Sounds. He believes that aquaculture still offers plenty of opportunity for future generations

Q)You have been a marine farmer for nearly 40 years – how did you start in the industry?
A) I got my first taste of the industry when I was doing university holiday work with a fishing company called Associated Fishermen. They were the very first to farm mussels in New Zealand. An old fisherman called Charlie Guard saw something about the Spanish mussel farming and got the other fishermen to invest and build concrete rafts that they towed down to a bay not far from where I live. One of the first jobs I had with them was going down with an underwater breathing apparatus called a Hooker and harvesting the mussels by hand. That was also my introduction to diving and I’ve been doing it ever since too.

Q) How did you go from harvesting by hand under the water, to having your own mussel farm?
A) I was doing a forestry degree to start with and in the second year I had a holiday job at a sawmill on a skid site rolling logs into a machine that stripped the bark off. It was enough to put me off for life. So I got another job those holidays (with Associated Fishermen). My first job was packing rotting snapper heads into 25kg bags for cray baits. Before long they sent me out on a fishing boat. And once I’d done that, the smell of the pine trees didn’t hold the same attraction as the smell of the ocean. I changed focus at university and went on to complete a degree in science then tried my hand at netting for sharks in my own leaking boat before becoming an advisor for the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries for 10 years before I left to become a mussel farmer.

Q) What was your role with MAF?
A) I worked alongside Jim Jenkins in a range of technical roles. Eventually I ran the spat fall programme looking for spat in the Marlborough Sounds after Jim went mussel farming then salmon farming himself.

In the beginning, we knew nothing about it other than some work that had been done for PhDs at Victoria University and Jim’s experience with oysters at Washington University. We just needed a reliable spat fall. We did a lot of work studying settlement patterns, wind direction, current directions, plankton etc. The work was marginally successful but the breakthrough was the discovery of the seaweed encrusted with mussel spat on 90 Mile Beach (Te-Oneroa-a-Tōhē), a wonder of nature. Jim and I also put in the first longline and set up the first blocks - and after people saw it, that was it, a transition from expensive and cumbersome rafts. The ordinary man on the street with little venture capital could get started with a longline and a few floats and build that up progressively into a farm.

Q) Why did you make the change to mussel farmer?
A) Mainly because I am a Kiwi, we are risk takers and innovators.

Q) No doubt a lot has changed over the last 40 years, but what was the social climate like for the original industry pioneers?
A) When we started, it was 1970s and New Zealand was a different world. People like to romanticise about the good life back then. Today most of us live in a safe environment in a warm house and food is about half the price, in real terms. Back then, a substantial part of the family’s income was spent on food and the country was a copy of the depressed Europe and was being run by government departments. There was no room for innovations. We lived off the sheep’s back. NZ was run along British lines and you kept your head down and toed the line – even down to the way you grew your hair. The opportunity to do something different was nil unless you had land. But with the emergence of aquaculture, here was an opportunity to go and do it, with basically your bare hands and a few resources. And people were full of admiration for us for trying something new and making it work. Now, after 40 years, we’ve got a bright, sustainable future, but rather than being proud of us we’re striking a head wind and I think that some people don’t understand their history.

Q) Recent research shows that there is a strong level of support for the industry in Marlborough and a small level of opposition – do you get this sense on the water?
A) We know that there are only a handful of people who don’t support the industry and that’s their prerogative. It’s all very well for someone to retire from Auckland and sit in their bach writing letters flat out complaining about the industry – but what about the young kids coming through looking for a chance? It’s old men stealing opportunities from the youth. During resource consent applications, naysayers can make claims without any proof and we have to prove them wrong This is a very worrying risk for industry and I believe it’s going to get worse.

Q) So how does this industry go about improving community support and understanding?
A) Social licence is incredibly important but we have to go deeper than just talking about it. If people could see and experience the industry and feel the way we do about it, then that would go a long way. When I take friends for a swim through the farms and they dive down and gather their own dinner - it is amazing to see how people totally engage once they see the beauty of a farm. We know that mussel farming environmentally is incredibly undamaging. I’ve been diving for decades, I swim under these farms and think this is amazing, you haven’t changed a thing. I look at all the indicators and it’s incredibly healthy. We need to engage the young and educate people about the sustainability of it, we need everyone living in the area to have a stake in the industry or at least contact with it, and we need to do a better job of telling the story about how vital the industry is in the growing communities.

Q) How vital is the industry to communities?
A) To understand the value aquaculture provides New Zealand, we can’t just look at the export value – you have to look at how many sets of hands the industry revenue passes through. I’ve got 25 staff who support their families and buy groceries from the local store, send their kids to the local schools. I’ve got five vessels and there’s a team of engineers who service these and build these. There’re people cleaning the facilities after the mussels are unloaded and size and colour graded. There’re engineers building equipment, the slipway guy doing the anti-fouling, the forklift driver, the compliance people, the finance people, health and safety people, the seeding cotton knitters, rope reconditioning people, our float makers – we haven’t even got the mussels into the factory yet and it’s an immense story, it goes on and on and on. It touches the lives of a lot of people and they don’t even realise it. Aquaculture is the lifeblood of some communities and that needs to be embraced and celebrated.

Q) You have a history of giving young kids an opportunity – is this part of your business philosophy?
A) I’m all for giving kids an opportunity. In this marine industry, I’d like to see that if anyone’s got the will, we’ll do our best to make them a bit of everything - make them hard working, loyal, thinking - and develop abilities they didn’t know they had. I think there’s a lot of people who don’t realise how smart they are and we can help them realise that by giving them a chance.

Q) 40 years on, do you still think there’s opportunity for people to make a start for themselves in mussel farming?
A) I think we’re on the cusp of something really good and I think there are great opportunities for kids and for New Zealand on the horizon. I believe there is always more opportunity tomorrow than what there was yesterday. And the future is looking bright for the sector