Reseeding juvenile mussels

Professor Andrew Jeffs (Leigh Marine Laboratory) explains why juvenile mussels must be reseeded onto new rope after approximately 6 months’ growth.

Transcript

PROFESSOR ANDREW JEFFS

The spat spends about 6–8 months on the nursery line, and by that time, there’s just so many mussels on that line and they’re getting bigger and bigger and growing very, very quickly at that age.

And the more they grow, they start pushing each other off the line and they start dropping off the line. So the mussel farmer will take those lines out of the water and drag them through a steel ring which pulls the mussels off the rope and then will seed those mussels back onto another rope but at lower numbers, so to space them out a bit more, so the mussels are reseeded to give them enough space to grow up to a bigger size.

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