Sanford Sustainable Fish

Today we visited Sanford sustainable fish factory on the water, founded in 1864. This is the oldest company listed on the NZ stock exchange. It is a generational practice which has been growing from one generation to the next. It was very cool to see how they auctioned off the fish as wholesale to other companies. An interesting fact their record was 65 tons of fish sold in 33 minutes. The company had provided over 700 million meals last year alone. I learned a lot about sustainability and how it relates to the fishing industry. The most important thing to consider when in this industry is not to overfish. It is essential the population stays at a certain level to guarantee the next generation of fish. If we take them all out before they breed we will be left with empty oceans. Due to this the New Zealand government regulates the type and amount of fish each vessel or company is allowed to legally harvest. There are also restricted areas of their oceans which fishing is not allowed. These areas are protected seas. It was interesting to see that New Zealand did in fact farm fish. I was always under the assumption that this was a more sustainable practice. Today I learned in many cases it is actually the opposite. The amount of resources that go into the feed for the fish are to great and due to this it is not the best practice for the environment and the overall goal of total sustainability. It was cool to hear how New Zealand enforced these laws. They would have people show up and do random checks and even put agents on fishing boats to monitor they are using legal practices. The fishing industry in New Zealand is huge and they do in fact export globally. Overall today was a great experience and I learned a lot on the tour.