Fishing is part of the Coromandel way; few seaside homes are without a colourfully named boat, and restaurants are spoilt for fresh produce.
Venturing out through Mercury Bay's sprinkle of islands might soon put you face to beak with a giant marlin, but on the Pohutukawa Coast winding from Thames to Coromandel, mussel farm fishing is the biggest lure.
Watch: Snapper and mussels - Coromandel
From Kirita Hill, just outside Coromandel town, the neat rows of buoys and rope of the farms appear like cat scratches on the silver surface of the firth.
The mussel spats make a smorgasbord for the schools of snapper that run along the coast, and local charter operators are only too happy to provide pest control.
Mark had come up from Christchurch three years earlier, looking for a job and somewhere to stay for three weeks.
An old mate, Mussel Barge Snapper Safaris owner Darryl O'Keeffe, happened to be in need of a skipper.
The slow pace of life in sleepy Coromandel town, population 1610 and zero traffic lights, has kept him around. The company has three barges, and all are constantly coming and going from crowded Hannafords Wharf.
A typical year averages 800 trips and 10,000 customers.
It's just gone 6.30am when Mark, clad in green bib overalls and a heavy-knit jersey, greets us with a tight handshake.
A construction gang from Auckland out on their annual holiday break-up is running a few minutes late, and the wind is picking up.
Mussel harvesters sway in Te Kouma Harbour and the nearby jagged sugarloaf rock cuts a shark fin figure in the drizzle.
The dark, high ranges that hang over the township are blanketed in mist.
"Don't take more than you're allowed," Mark tells the crew, who have just arrived hauling chilly bins stuffed with bottles and sausages.
"You'll get away with murder more easily than you'll get away with taking excess fish."
He cares deeply about the state of the snapper fishery and can't tolerate greed or those whose clumsy handling of snapper commit the fish to a slow death after they've been tossed back in the water.
"It's a personal choice, but I personally think, unless you are struggling for a fish, if you can put it back, put it back."
The barge churns out of the harbour, swings left at Rangipukea Island and meets the light swells of the firth.
Mark points us down the coast until we're well among a web of mussel farms, the underwater masses of spats marked by buoys.
We find one to hook up to, then the radio blasts to life with Eric Clapton's Layla.
When the tide turns low here, the snapper come on in the current, along with the odd kingfish and gurnard.
We aren't the only ones waiting: a few hungry pied shags sit on the surface biding their time for a chance to snatch a snapper before it can be reeled up.
The first catch of the day, under-sized, has to be tossed over the other side.
For the big ones, a net hangs nearby to help with landing.
Eddie Coutinho is the first of the gang to bring up a huge snapper, earning a hoot and a congratulations from Mark.
Eddie Coutinho with a snapper caught from a mussel farm in the Firth of Thames. Photo / Alan Gibson
"While he's fish and chips all you fellas will be having sausages."
But lines are soon tugging everywhere, and the steel bench at the centre of the barge fills with snapper.
The catch counter clicks over - 28, 29, 30 - and the chilly bin is cleared of bottles and coke cans to make room.
Mark has just finished freeing up a headache of a tangle to find a rookie fisher winding in a 1.5kg snapper and nearly hitting his catch limit.
"I thought you didn't know how to fish? Of course you do!" he says, freeing the hook from the fish's mouth.
"I mean, what do you call that? A butterfly?"
He plunges a knife into the soft spot above the snapper's eye, then gives it a sharp twist.
Minutes later, something seems wrong as Mark shouts to everyone to get their lines out of the water.
A shark?
Perhaps worse: a kingfish.
It's too late. The monster manages to tangle up three or four lines.
It still breaks free. Mark mutters something nasty to himself.
But in all, it's been a good day on the water.
The clicker has hit 71 and it's a while yet to lunchtime.
A mussel harvester glides by and the boys onboard it watch the fishing frenzy.
"It's always been a good breeding ground for snapper here, but the mussel industry has just made it so much better," Mark tells us back at the jetty.
"My boss has been doing this for 17 odd years, and he said the fishery is getting stronger every year."
Coromandel's mussel industry is now worth millions and employs hundreds, with more still like Mark making a living in jobs that rely on it.
They sell buoys and rope, repair engines, or transport the stock down the coast to Tauranga.
Much like the gold boom more than a century before, it was built with little and from little by a handful of pioneers.
Here, in the early 1980s, they looked to the gentle waters of the firth for their fortune.
One was Allan Bartrom, whose son Jake now runs the family's most visible contribution to local aquaculture, the Coromandel Mussel Kitchen. With its heritage and bushy backdrop, it's hard not to steer off SH25 and stop for lunch.
Most order what Jake calls the hamburger of mussel dishes; the mixed grill.
"It's pretty simple; we shuck the halfshell mussels raw, and then it's purely just a bit of garlic butter or tomato salsa and cheese."
Like a line from Forrest Gump, the options are endless: mussel chowder, mussel fritters, steamed mussels, battered mussels, smoked mussel pate.
For us, Jake lays on the only-in-Coromandel Waimangu mussels; a pot from the namesake farm served with a yellow curry infused with kaffir lime.
"You've got to try the mussels when you come here like you've got to try the wine when you're in Marlborough ... it's just what you do."
With that, we turn back on to the highway and head for Kirita Hill, assured by our full stomachs and the donated snapper in the boot of an enduring truth: the Coromandel always provides.
The Waimangu Mussel Pot
At the Coromandel Mussel Kitchen, this favourite is made from mussels from its Waimangu farm, but the recipe is universal to any large serving of decent New Zealand greenshell mussels.
1 Combine 180ml of canola oil and 12 tbsp of yellow curry paste in a pan. Fry until it smells aromatic.
2 Combine 4 tbsp of chicken stock, six cups of water, six litres of coconut milk, six kaffir lime leaves, 12 tsp of palm or brown sugar, half a cup of fish sauce, one and a half cups of lime juice, half a cup of lemon juice, eight tbsp of turmeric and two tsp of crushed chili.
3 Add ingredients to pot of steamed mussels, then let simmer for five minutes.
The series
Today: A snapper safari in a mussel town
Tomorrow: Hangi the Rotorua way
Wednesday: Smoking on the Tongariro
Thursday: The barbecue capital of New Zealand
Friday: Kaimoana on the coast.
