Commitment to the Environment
The Marine Farming Association are committed to assisting the marine farming industry in continuously improving their environmental performance.
We have an Environmental Mentor who sits on our Environment & Compliance Committee and focus's on the continual education of vessel crews, vessel audits to ensure all environmental equipment is in place, farm audits to monitor harvesting practices and beach cleaning.
MFA Environmental Team
The Marine Farming Association (MFA) facilitates an Environmental & Compliance Sub Committee.
This committee is well represented by most of the companies within the marine farming industry in Te Tauihu.
This committee meets every two months to discuss what they are seeing on the water, they share innovation and improvements that their companies are making so that the whole industry can benefit.
MFA Environmental Certification
The MFA Environmental Certification Programme was reimagined in 2021 after being active for 10 years. The new programme sees our members re-apply for certification annually, we implemented five achievement levels and this means that each year a company can improve or go backwards in level, so there is no resting on their laurels.
Our hope is that this programme will now drive a culture of continuous improvement.
Future Post - float recycling partnership
At MFA we're committed to assisting the marine farming industry continuously improve our environmental performance. We've partnered with Future Post to ensure that a local, sustainable pathway exists for our muscle floats. We’re proud to see that these floats, after their principal use at sea for anywhere from 20 to 40 years, are being recycled into another long-term product. Our partnership is a great example of Kiwi companies keeping things local and working together for the good of the environment
MFA Crew Induction Video
This video was created for our members to use with all new recruits.
It outlines our expectations as an industry and best practices.
The actors in the video are people from the industry and comedy has been used in the hopes that new recruits will find it more engaging to watch because they will recognise people in the video and it's a little bit funny. We tried to avoid creating a boring instructional video.
Disclaimer: The Environmental Certification has been refreshed since this video was made, but the video is still relevant.
MFA Industry Beach Cleaning Programme
The MFA Industry Beach cleaning programme has been running in Te Tauihu for over 10 years now and sees industry spending 2,000 hours per year cleaning beaches.
The Better Beaches Project
The Better Beaches Project is an extension to the existing beach cleaning programme and is designed to run alongside the existing industry beach cleaning programme and to turbo charge beach cleaning effort.
This programme is sponsored by friends of the marine farming industry and the goal is that it will provide us with funds to increase our annual cleaning effort by 1,000 hours per year.
All Sponsorship funds received will be used for people power and vessel time.
MFA Environmental reporting App
The Marine Farming Association (MFA) App has been designed to make reporting easier, faster and more accurate.
It focuses on environmental reporting, in the top of the south (NZ) and it allows our members and the wider community to report beach cleans and float retrievals in real time.
This information helps the MFA monitor environmental impact and to proactively put training programmes in place to mitigate any issues arising.
The Vessel & Farm check aspects of the App have been built in for our environmental mentors to report with ease when out auditing and training members on best practise.
The app can be used when offline, so it’s perfect for use anywhere in the top of the south (NZ).
Enter a Beach Clean
The Marine Farming Association and its members participate in regular beach cleans.
If you have done a beach clean we would love for you to provide us with the information from what you found.
We report our beach cleaning statistics every year, the more information we have feeding in to us the better picture we get. So we thank you for your time and effort!
Float recovery
If you have found a float on the beach, please let us know and we will advise next steps.
Feedback
The Marine Farming Association is a very small team so we love to hear your feedback both positive and negative because we can not be everywhere at once.
Negative feedback provides opportunities for improvement, working and engaging with the communities effected so that marine farming will be around for future generations.
Aplus programme
Aquaculture New Zealand (AQNZ) is the national body for Aquaculture in NZ.
AQNZ are a small, dedicated team of professionals, passionate about supporting the sustainable growth of aquaculture in New Zealand.
A+ is a world class sustainable management framework facilitated by Aquaculture NZ which enables the New Zealand aquaculture industry to better engage with their communities and continuously improve their environmental practices while strengthening global demand for NZ seafood.
The Marine Farming Association (MFA) members in the Top of the South island are generally part of both the MFA programmes and the A plus programme.
Marine Wildlife Sightings
When you are out and about in Te Tau Ihu, we ask that you keep your eyes open and report any sightings of rare marine wildlife, any interesting wildlife behaviour, stranding's or entanglements.
If you see a rare species, a stranding, entanglement or something of concern, please report it directly to DOC:
Phone: 080 036 2468 (0800 DOC HOT) - Hotline available 24/7
DOC Online form
*Only fill out the MFA forms if not urgent, otherwise phone 0800 DOC HOT.
For King Shag sightings, please use the button to the right "Wildlife Sighting"
Wildlife Identification:
Draft_APEC Best Prac Guide 14-07-21 v3
This is the Draft baseline report written by Tim Huntington from Poseidon Aquatic Resource Management and Joan Drinkwin from Natural Resource Consultants with financial support from the Ocean Conservancy and the support of the Global Ghost Gear Initiative.
Draft Report: Managing Abandoned, Lost or Discarded Fishing Gear and Aquaculture Equipment in the APEC Region - Best Practice Guide.
We welcome your feedback and questions, if you have any.