Young pāua growing well
Our work monitoring the juvenile pāua around Kaikōura has shown encouraging signs of recovery of this hardhit population. Wild pāua tagged a year ago have had excellent growth rates and survival. They’re quickly advancing through the size classes and will soon migrate to deeper waters and join the adult spawning groups, a key step in recovery. The abundance of pāua at our sites is increasing significantly through time, and we are seeing much higher numbers than we did in theearly days after the earthquake. Hatchery-raised reseed pāua planted in 2018 by the… Read More
Paua population monitoring
Monitoring of intertidal paua populations along the Kaikōura coastline has yielded some interesting findings. It looks like overall the hot summer hasn’t adversely affected the vulnerable juveniles, who seem to be growing more quickly than we expected. Recaptured seed paua, identified by the blue shell material at their apex from hatchery diet, have shown phenomenal growth rates since being seeded a year ago. Paua that grow quickly will reach predator release sooner, the size at which they are less likely to be eaten. The natural population is now dominated by larger paua… Read More
Juvenile paua research
We have had a busy past few months doing some experimental fieldwork. This included a pilot study looking at some semi-artificial reef installations to see if juvenile paua would use some rock-filled cages for cover/shelter. These were designed to provide optimal habitat for wild paua, and possibly to use as deployment structures for paua reseeding efforts. In just a couple weeks we found that all sorts of animals had voluntarily crawled into the cages, including plenty of black and yellow paua aged 1-2 years. We were pretty excited at this response, which… Read More
