Surprised by salmon

During last week's drive through the south island of New Zealand, I was surprised to pass by a couple of salmon farms in the middle of the country, which obviously were based in fresh water. As Tasmanian salmon farming is in the ocean, I kind of assumed that salmon would not happily live all their life in fresh water. Seems I was wrong.

At the Mt Cook Salmon website, they talk of the history of salmon farming in that country:

In 1900 the first attempt was made to ship Sockeye ova (eggs) to New Zealand from Canada which had been gathered from Weaver Creek , British Columbia in 1898. This shipment turned bad en route. A second shipment of 500,000 ova was supplied free of charge by the Canadian Fisheries Department, collected from the tributaries of Shuswap Lake in the Kamloops district of British Columbia. This time 160,000 survived and were hatched at the Hakataramea Hatchery near the Waitaki River .

The bulk were carefully liberated into streams feeding into beautiful Lake Ohau . However, instead of running to the sea, and returning to fresh water to spawn (as is the normal life cycle) the Sockeye developed into a non-migratory population.

This is the only self-sustaining population in the Southern Hemisphere and forms the basis for the fish farmed today by Mt Cook Salmon. Chinook salmon introduced around the same time established normal migratory patterns and can be caught in the major South Island east coast river systems today.

I remember when visiting the Salmon Ponds in Tasmania many years ago (it's a historic trout hatchery, actually), it told the story of how some early fish pioneer tried to introduce salmon to Tasmanian rivers by importing fertilised salmon eggs (not an easy feat when they had to be shipped from England), then releasing them in the rivers and hoping that they would head out to sea and back to the rivers to spawn. They did leave the rivers, but never returned.

I always thought it was a sad image, this man going to the rivers every year for a decade or two, waiting forlornly for his cherished salmon to return.

But now that I think of it, the Salmon Ponds themselves contain some giant salmon, as well as very big trout, in its freshwater ponds, so I must have known then that salmon could spend all their life in fresh water. I must concentrate more on keeping my salmon knowledge current.

Incidentally, I did enjoy one very good salmon meal in New Zealand, in a Japanese restaurant which grilled the skin crispy, had a teriyaki sauce and put it on a bed of wasabi flavoured mashed potato. (The mild wasabi mash was very good of itself.) I thought the salmon was less fatty than Tasmanian salmon, and now I see that Mt Cook Salmon does claim this is a feature of its product:

Our salmon live in fast flowing cold water and develop firmer flesh with less inter-muscular fat. This makes for a tastier firmer textured fish.

Well, another reason to visit New Zealand again.