Being able to look after our slice of the world and know that we're doing right
for the future here and then also, you know,
providing the best kaimoana that's ours you know.
Crayfish and paua, they're the crown jewels of New Zealand's coastline.
And I'm thinking our perspective that those crown jewels, the Kiwis should be getting the best of it.
We're just, right now we're just on the start of Te Awaiti station, which runs up to Pahaoa about 10km north.
If we look back we can see Tora and the top of the Aorangi Forest Park.
We'll be pulling pots up today and checking them and getting the crays out
and then rebaiting and putting them back down.
I think it's just having a mindset about looking after the product
and you know, any sort of fish or any sort of animal.
If you pick something up I always think, say with cray fishing and with crayfish...
I don't know, I remember my rugby coach saying to me, you know, soft hands when you catch the ball,
it's the same with the crayfish, you know.
Soft hands, look after it and then it's all about placement, not throwing anything,
if one of these fish loses a leg, instead of that fish growing the next year
it will put all its energy into shelling and growing that new leg.
So there's no movement forward for that animal.
We've decided to increase the size limit for the female crayfish.
We believe that the more opportunity they get to stay in the ocean and reproduce,
the more eggs they'll produce and that means the more crayfish they'll have in the future.
We've been working on our packaging for a long time.
And I think a huge part of my upbringing and my personal ethics was if I ever own a business
I do not want to be producing a package that is going to be put in the rubbish,
I just always had this issue with, like the ethical responsibility of who was taking ownership
of that, because businesses were shipping things off and the customer had the responsibility
to dispose of it correctly, but the business wasn't creating the right package
that was eco friendly and we do have to really consider these sorts of things and how many packages
we might send a year and how many packages other businesses might send a year.
It's so god damn important that we're looking after our mother earth.
In terms of insulating the fish and kind of protecting it on its journey
we've been using seaweed and we've been going through heaps of different types.
This one here is called lansbergio, which is a beautiful weed and it's not sticky,
it's not smelly, but also it does the trick because it's light and once it's dried it can absorb
moisture from the fish, which is kind of the important part.
Not making the package too wet.
Yeah, so we do both restaurants and consumers.
So yeah these could be for birthday party, you know.
We had quite a few over lockdown, we had quite a few people ordering for other people to
surprise them, you know, because they can't hang out with their whānau and stuff like
that so it was cool.
It was cool to see all the positive vibes through such a hard time as well.
It's a real taste of Aotearoa isn't it?
Like it's one thing that we have, you know, especially paua as well so historic in terms our...
You know paua is like the best steak you can get from the ocean, it's a stunning product.
There's some sort of connection with those products from our coastlines
that you know, have a beauty and they taste amazing at the same time.
New Zealanders should be enjoying the produce that we have here.
Frying some paua with garlic and butter.
So just slice it thinly and fry it up in a hot skillet and it's pretty much done.
We're just boiling some crays.
We usually boil the crays for about seven minutes, so wait until the water comes back
to the boil, and it's seven minutes after that point.
Little crayfish-pops it's called, which we're going to crumb. Yeah, cray-pops.