Lucas Evans

So, I visited Coromandel from where I was living in Canberra in 2012 on a family trip, and I was looking for opportunities to stay over here. And I was told about this seaweed, an invasive species of seaweed called Undaria pinnatifida, and how it was utilised for food and for other products. So, I thought that was exciting and new, something completely different than I was used to – I hadn’t thought about seaweed before that. And I went home actually the next day after finding out about it and turned it into a business. So, I registered a business, developed a couple of products and went through the certifications to harvest, and did that for the next… well up until now. So that’s 10 years ago now. Yeah.
We operate off a large three-million-dollar barge, which has been designed for mussel farming –green-lipped mussels. So, we meet the barge with the crew down at the local wharf where all the mussel barges offload their mussels, and head out to local mussel farms in the Hauraki Gulf, which are only… oh, it depends, sometimes only five minutes away, but the one we went to yesterday was an hour and a half away. And yeah, we go out. It’s generally pretty flat out there, although it does get a little windy sometimes. And we move alongside mussel lines and lift up the mussel lines out of the water to present the biomass. If we’re harvesting, we’re cutting it. If we’re seeding out, we’re putting seeded line out. So, it’s actually very pleasant. Yesterday, we saw dolphins. We saw whales recently as well. We see penguins. And if we’re lucky, we can catch a couple of fish during lunchtime, so it’s good. It’s almost a day off for me when I get to go on the water.