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Seafood lovers can expect another haul of good-quality Bluff oysters when the season kicks off on March 1, the fishing industry says.
Commercial fishing for the famous Deep South delicacy has been brought forward three weeks to be in line with the recreational fishing season, which eager seafood retailers in Auckland have welcomed.
Despite warnings of a bleak outlook for the Bluff oyster beds from some experts, and the impact of the killer parasite bonamia, the Bluff Oyster Management Company remains optimistic.
"This year will be very much like last year, which was a pretty good season; the quality was pretty good last year," said company chairman Warren Conway.
"Everyone gets very excited in Bluff at this time of the year. The boats are getting ready to go out. Oysters should be in the north in the afternoon of the opening day in selected supermarkets."
The Auckland Fish Market is gearing up for the first shipment of Bluff oysters in the days after the early season start.
"It creates a bit of a frenzy. It drags a lot of people to come out and buy their seafood," said market manager Nigel Thomas.
"Oyster lovers seem to swear by them. There's some mystique about the Bluff oyster [that] people seem to really love," he said.
Mr Conway said prices would likely be much the same as last year.
"There have been one or two increases in packaging and freight, but I don't think it will be a great increase."
Mr Thomas said retail prices would be dictated by the wholesale auction, but he expected the price at the market to be similar to last year - $24 a dozen.
University of Otago researcher Peter Knight described the Bluff oyster fishery as "in ruins" and said the question was how to manage it.
But Mr Conway said: "The catch today is not as good as it was 10 years ago, but there is still a lot of optimism."
The biggest threat to the oyster industry had been bonamia, rather than overfishing. The commercial quota is limited to 15 million oysters in the season, which ends on August 31.
"The beds are slowly coming back. What we take out of them amounts to nothing compared to what [bonamia] can do."
There was no silver bullet for the parasite, which "comes and goes" in the oyster beds.
"We try to find out what causes it and if you can see the disease is going to begin we can go out and dredge up the oysters rather than them being killed."
A survey of Bluff oyster beds begins tomorrow and findings, available within a couple of weeks, will chart the impact bonamia has had and what oyster numbers are looking like.
