Seeding spat with mussock

Professor Andrew Jeffs (Leigh Marine Laboratory) describes how spat are attached to mussock – a biodegradable cotton stocking – for growth on mussel farms.

Transcript

PROFESSOR ANDREW JEFFS

Once the spat is collected off the beach, it’s normally chilled and put in bags and then put in a chilled truck like an ice-cream truck and taken to the farm usually within 24 hours. It’s put on a mussel barge which goes out onto the farm, and the seaweed, which is covered in spat, is forced down a tube with a rope going down it and into some cotton stocking, which is called mussock.

And that stocking holds the seaweed with the mussel spat on it against the rope and then that’s hung on floats on the surface and the mussel attaches to the rope, and the stocking’s made of cotton so it rots in the sea over a couple of weeks. And so you’re left with a rope that’s completely coated with baby mussels.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Professor Andrew Jeffs – Leigh Marine Laboratory, Auckland University. Sheree Wagener. Just the Job, Dave Mason Productions. www.careers.govt.nz/resources/tools-and-activities/just-the-job